The Alex Skolnick Trio (l-r): Nathan Peck, Skolnick, Matt Zebroski
Photo by D. Randall Blythe
“The title definitely makes a statement,” says Alex Skolnick, referring to Prove You’re Not a Robot, the latest release by his jazz-rock ensemble, the Alex Skolnick Trio. “On the one hand, it’s a phrase we’ve all encountered online, and I think, ‘Why should I have to prove I’m not a robot, especially when a robot is posing the question?’
“On the other hand, there’s a musical statement,” he continues. “There’s been a decline in many types of music, most of it in the pop world where a lot of it has become more robotic. They’ve conducted tests and have found that people can’t tell the difference between actual artists and AI-generated music, but that doesn’t happen with jazz. When you get a quality group of dedicated musicians, their work can’t be replicated.”
You’d need one exceptionally crafty robot to replicate Alex Skolnick. On one side, there’s his blistering thrash-metal persona, honed over nearly four decades with Bay Area legends Testament. On the other, there’s his sharp, high-energy jazz improvisation with the Alex Skolnick Trio. Sometimes it’s hard to believe that all of it actually comes from the same person.
Skolnick, with Gibson ES-347, onstage with the AST at the Cutting Room in New York City.
“I’ve heard it compared to how an actor changes roles, and I get that,” he says. “When I warm up for a show with the trio, I work on my Grant Green and my Wes Montgomery. But when I’m getting ready to play with Testament, I click on the distortion and go for some Van Halen or [Allan] Holdsworth. The actor is the same, but the script is different.”
Continuing with the analogy, he says, “Instead of changing costumes, I’m changing gear. I wouldn’t play screaming metal on a ’76 Gibson L-5 archtop, just as I wouldn’t try to play jazz through an Orange Rockerverb cranked on the overdrive channel. So the person’s the same, but the tools are different. The bottom line is, it all feels very natural to me.”
From the start, the AST specialized in wildly inventive, improv-heavy covers of hard rock and metal tunes. Over the years, the band has had their way with “Detroit Rock City,” “Dream On,” “War Pigs,” “No One Like You,” Goodbye to Romance,” “Highway Star” and “Tom Sawyer,” among others. Not every tune lends itself to interpretation, however. As Skolnick points out, “Whenever you’re playing a song that’s essentially a vehicle for improvisation, it has to have a strong, identifiable melody—that’s key. Even when we take things really outside, the foundation of the song is the melody. The Kiss songs we’ve done—great melodies. Same with ‘Dream On.’ I would put the Scorpions at the top of the list. Every song of theirs has a melody you could play on a saxophone.”
“When I warm up for a show with the trio, I work on my Grant Green and my Wes Montgomery. But when I’m getting ready to play with Testament, I click on the distortion and go for some Van Halen.”
Thus far, all efforts to transpose AC/DC to free-form jazz have proved elusive. “They’ve got great riffs and grooves, but they’re not big on strong vocal melodies,” he says. “Trying to do one of our arrangements with AC/DC would be like covering James Brown. Incredible music and awesome grooves, but it’s not about the melody.”
Lately, Skolnick and company (drummer Matt Zebroski and bassist Nathan Peck) have placed more emphasis on original material, but they haven’t bagged the covers entirely: Prove You’re Not aRobot includes “Armondo’s Mood,” a cheeky mashup of Chick Corea’s “Armando’s Rhumba” and Steve Howe’s “Mood for a Day” that beautifully showcases Skolnick’s breezy, delicate touch and dulcet tones. There’s also a hypnotic take on Tom Petty’s classic “Breakdown” that sees the guitarist skipping and pirouetting across the fretboard over multiple time signatures. “That one came about the day Tom Petty died,” Skolnick explains. “I went on stage and said, ‘We just lost Tom Petty,’ and we started playing the vamp. When we decided to record it, I knew that I didn’t want to just copy the original, so we made it slower and did odd-time sections. In a lot of ways, it’s inspired by Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond.”
Skolnick with his signature ESP electric
Photo credit by Evelyn Steinweg
Among the album’s original tunes, “Polish Goodbye” is a snarky and sassy modern-age lounge affair that offers sticksman Zebroski considerable room to stretch out and flex his chops, while “Asking for a Friend” is a shimmering (and at times, aching) ballad built on Skolnick’s spare, contemplative melodies. The effervescent “Guiding Ethos” ranks as one of the guitarist’s most memorable compositions, and his playing—in particular, an extended steel-string acoustic solo—rises to meet the quality of his writing.
“I actually wrote that song on the piano,” he reveals. “That was my first instrument, but I had a teacher who wasn’t very inspiring, and so I got into the guitar. Lately, I’ve revisited playing the piano a bit—I’ve gotten into some good jams—and I came up with the parts that became ‘Guiding Ethos.’ I transferred it to guitar and thought it sounded nice, particularly this section that’s so bright and shiny. It offered me a lot of spots to go places and have cool key changes.”
“Instead of changing costumes, I’m changing gear.”
The song, he continues, “was meant for steel-string acoustic, particularly the solo. I knew I wanted the sound to really pop, and as it turned out, right before we did the album, I had needed a tax write-off, so I allowed myself to buy a guitar that I might normally have considered an extravagance.”
The guitar in question is a 1935 Gibson L-00 acoustic that Skolnick found while poking around at RetroFret Vintage Guitars in Brooklyn. “They had over a dozen guitars from the ’30s and ’40s, and I went around and played them all,” he says. “Some were easy to play, some were hard to play. They all sounded good, but some sounded great. The L-00 sounded great and was easy to play. It’s a parlor guitar, but it blows a lot of my other guitars out of the water. The people at the studio where we recorded were like, ‘That is one of the best guitars we’ve ever heard. It sounds like it has a microphone on it.’”
Perhaps more importantly, the guitarist’s accountant also weighed in with his assessment. “He said, ‘Well done,’” Skolnick says with a laugh. “All in all, it was worth the money.”
Founding Partners: Tosin Abasi (left) with an Abasi Concepts Larada 8 Master Series Black Beauty and Ivan Chopik with an ēmi 8 Master Series Black Beauty
Photo by Ekaterina Gorbacheva
In the modern guitar lexicon, few names scream “new frontier” like Tosin Abasi. As the creative engine of Animals as Leaders, he’s helped reframe the electric guitar’s vocabulary. But unlike Jimi Hendrix, Eddie Van Halen, or Steve Vai before him, he’s done it not on six strings—or even seven—but on eight. So maybe it’s only fitting that he’s now CEO of Abasi Concepts, the only “guitar solutions” company that can deliver the instruments he needs for his otherworldly technique.
Abasi’s not doing it alone. Abasi Concepts co-founder and COO Ivan Chopik has deep roots in the guitar industry. Along with his background in manufacturing and supply-chain development, he is the founder and editor-in-chief of Guitar Messenger. This experience brings a rare duality to the brand: a guitarist with deep genre fluency combined with a business-operations mind focused on precision.
Through our conversation, it became clear that their partnership runs on an unspoken principle: innovation born from problem solving. Rather than chasing trends, Abasi Concepts begins with questions like, “What keeps extended-range guitars from feeling effortless? How should ergonomics evolve as the register expands? Where does resonance get lost between wood, hardware, and finish?”
Their answers don’t arrive as marketing slogans—they take shape in the lines, contours, and design choices that put a guitarist’s hands first, while giving their eyes something just as striking.
Far from the typical hype of “the future of guitars,” these two talented players treat design like composition: eliminate noise, enhance articulation, and let ideas breathe. If there’s a better way to do something, find it, refine it, or create it.
PG sat down with Abasi and Chopik to explore how they translate that ethos into instruments, and why their brand of innovation stands apart as the genuine article.
Abasi with a Larada 7 Nylon Custom Prototype and Chopik with an ēmi 7 Master Series Jade. Also pictured (l-r): Larada 8 Master Series Black Beauty; ēmi 8 Master Series Mint; ēmi 8 Master Series Lavender
Photo by Ekaterina Gorbacheva
Tosin, your partnership with Ibanez led the charge for 8-string guitars. And then, as everybody was expecting the next Ibanez Abasi signature model, you launched Abasi Concepts. What inspired you to go into the guitar business?
Tosin Abasi: I had a close to a 10-year relationship with Ibanez, but there were a lot of realities of dealing with such a large company that started to make the process feel less than ideal for us. It got to the point where I felt I could take it and bring it to life on my own.
And I did negotiate ownership of that original body design, so the Larada [model] started life as an Ibanez.
So to avoid the red tape at Ibanez, you thought, “I know what will be easier. I’ll start a company.”
Abasi: [laughs] A part of what informed that was my experience of making custom 8-string guitars. I liked the whole luthier experience of having a bespoke handmade instrument. It was attractive to make a made-in-the-USA, smaller-scale instrument; something closer to a Suhr or something of that caliber.
It was also a perfect storm of living in Southern California. There are a lot of guitar builders here, so what seems like a pie in the sky idea, if you’re in Southern California, all of that infrastructure is there.
Ivan, how did you connect with Tosin to create Abasi Concepts?
Ivan Chopik: Our first meeting was actually through my interview with Tosin for Guitar Messenger in 2010. Later, myself and one other guy started the metal ensemble at Berklee [College of Music]. We had a small budget to bring in visiting artists, and I was like, “Man, we have to bring Tosin in here.” He came to Berklee, did a performance there, and we stayed in touch.
Abasi: I knew Ivan could wear many hats. Ivan has this capacity in the business sense, but he’s also a great guitar player. So when it comes to making decisions, we’re not a business that doesn’t understand the culture of guitar playing. We both play, and we’re both very passionate.
“I think a lot of 8-string guitars attempt to scale up a 6-string into an 8-string. I wanted to treat the 8-string as its own consideration.”—Tosin Abasi
You launched Abasi Concepts with the Larada, a guitar design that definitely makes a statement. What informs your designs, and why do you think players are so willing to embrace them?
Abasi: I think the search began as more of trying to answer a problem. I think a lot of 8-string guitars attempt to scale up a 6-string into an 8-string. But I felt that a ground-up approach made more sense. I wanted to treat the 8-string as its own consideration. So there was a solution-oriented approach.
Chopik: It was exciting to rethink a lot of those things as its own instrument, rather than an extended version of something that already exists.
Still, both the Larada and your ēmi model are more than exercises in function over form. What made you lean into such a bold design instead of something more traditional?
Abasi: We wanted to offer an aspirational instrument. I feel like every player has a poster on their wall of a guitar they’d pull the trigger on if they ever made enough money. But, as a metal guitarist playing an extended-range guitar, there wasn’t the same prestige to many of the options.
We also wanted to communicate, aesthetically, that we are forward-thinking. The music I make, I’m very concerned with new musical horizons. So we wanted an instrument that encapsulated all of these concepts.
Chopik: I think it’s also important to notice that all the ergonomics and design choices, while modern, are all from the player’s perspective. All the different curves, all the cutouts; there’s an aesthetic choice, but there’s also a functional one. That’s where there’s a connection between the design and the player’s perspective.
A Larada 8 Master Series ready for sanding in preparation for paint.
Photo by Ivan Chopik
Two guitar players can come at the same thing from very different perspectives. How do you two balance that?
Chopik: I toured with progressive metal bands for some years. And I was hugely inspired and influenced by Animals As Leaders and Periphery when they came out. So there’s definitely a lot of overlap in the things that we like. But, over the years, I came full circle to one of my first loves, which is blues.
So we do come at it from different angles, and there are different iterations of gear that serve what we’re doing. But [the guitars are] a good example of something that extends beyond the realm of what one set of musicians might expect.
Abasi: I think it’s great. As idiosyncratic and distinct as my playing style is, we are trying to offer a guitar that works for other styles as well.
Like, Ivan’s an interesting player. He can do the progressive metal thing, but he can also … I call it “Dad Hands,” where he’s like, “Does the guitar have fight in it?” [laughs]
That’s how we achieve this balance where the guitar does excel at very modern and distinct styles of music, but also doesn’t fail to deliver classic and established tones.
“All the ergonomics and design choices, while modern, are all from the player’s perspective.”—Ivan Chopik
Currently, you offer versions of two body styles. And customers have to be signed up for your newsletter to be notified of availability. Why follow such a limited-release model?
Chopik: We base a lot of releases around streamlining the manufacturing process. Having greater consistency for our team helps them stay very connected and gives us better visibility into [quality control].
The customer is more informed than ever, and they have more choices than ever. They’re looking for every last detail, and they’re informed about specs. We have to answer to that, and we’re very specific with it. So, ultimately, the consistency comes from our standards, the design itself, and how we want to see it executed.
Abasi: It’s relatively boutique and lean. We want to consider every product we release. We want it to be meaningful, and the Larada was the starting point.
We know what we think the guitar needs to be, and there are so many variables that come together to make a guitar that feels that special. It could be as minute as the number of coats sprayed on the body at a facility, which affects the guitar’s resonance. This is the level of granularity we’re getting down to.
A pair of ēmi 6 Master Series Lunabursts in the paint booth.
Photo by Ivan Chopik
You’ve also released the Pathos Distortion and Micro Aggressor compressor pedals. Why branch out from guitars?
Abasi: Abasi Concepts was always meant to be an umbrella encompassing more than just guitar design. We’re interested in solutions across the board. And part of the fun of having the company is that we get to manifest the things we wish existed.
With the Pathos pedal, Brian [Wampler] had existing circuitry, and we got together and tweaked it to taste. Ivan and I both personally use this pedal, and it does a really good job of achieving an amp-like feel in pedal form.
Compression isn’t even on the radar for a lot of guitar players, and then the ones that exist don’t always feel great on the guitar. So the Micro Aggressor has an almost amp-type bloom and response, similar to cranking a tube amp and having the power section start to work a bit. It’s another thing where I think we’re solving something.
“Part of the fun of having the company is that we get to manifest the things we wish existed.”—Tosin Abasi
Tosin, you’re playing tube amps these days, but you guys also collaborated with Neural DSP on the Abasi: Archetype plugin suite. Are there plans to broaden the line into amplifiers and additional plugins?
Abasi: We’d love to have an offering in each of those spaces. Software is a territory that we have not really stepped into yet, but it is clearly of such utility that it would make sense. But Ivan and I are both big fans of tube amplifiers. There’s no substitute for playing an amp in a room. So the amp thing has been a conversation.
What about the instruments themselves? What kinds of designs can Abasi Concepts fans look forward to?
Abasi: We’ve been dabbling in nylon-string instruments, since I have some tracks that use that sound. We also want to offer instruments at a lower price point. It’s hard to make these things in the United States to the caliber we’re trying to make them, but we’re sensitive to the fact that there are players who don’t have enough to buy the Masterbuilt stuff.
Chopik: That’s where our Legion Series comes in. The idea was to give players the chance to experience the same design language and feel that defines what we do, but at a more approachable price point. Both lines come from the same DNA, but the Legion models are bolt-on, with a thin U-profile neck that’s flatter and faster. The materials also play a big role. For instance, wenge necks are unique to the Legion line.
We’re also looking at a semihollow take on the Larada. In the same spirit, it’s looking to solve issues with traditional design.
Larada 8 Master Series guitars lined up for QC before they enter paint prep.
Photo by Tosin Abasi
You’ve definitely carved out your own lane, but there’s been a noticeable rise in artists and influencers starting their own gear companies. Why do you think that’s happening?
Abasi: It’s an extension of the fact that artists have direct relationships with their fans and manufacturers. Before, that connection was filtered through record labels and publications. We’re in a paradigm now where you have direct access to turning those ideas into reality.
Also, artists are reclaiming their brand value. They can hold the keys and deliver instruments that represent their vision directly. I actually think we will see more of it.
Chopik: It’s interesting to see this formula growing and expanding, and the gap between artist and product narrowing. It’s a lot of work. And had we known the journey that we would be on, a lot of it would have seemed unreasonable. But we held it together because we had such a strong belief that it was going to work.
“Unreasonable” is an interesting word choice. From Animals as Leaders’ first album to the Larada’s body style, you guys have practically cornered the market on unreasonable.
Chopik: [laughs] Yeah, for sure. I mean, look, we built this thing from the ground up, and funded it ourselves. And you know, we learned lessons along the way. It’s definitely been a journey.
Way back in the 2010s, before starting Mr. Black as his pedal-building outlet, when Jack DeVille was releasing effects under his own name, he created the Mod Zero. This multi-modulation unit covered flanging, chorus, rotary effects, and vibrato, and, with a limited run of 250 units, gained a reputation and is long sold out.
Although Mr. Black’s Mod.One is not that pedal, this all-original unit designed by DeVille follows a similar mission, and its reverential name is surely no accident. The Mod.One is a 100-percent-analog modulator that spans chorus, flange, and high-band flange with a unique control set designed for flexibility, sonic excitement, options and a lot of character.
Controls for the Curious
If you come to the Mod.One a little fuzzy on the differences between chorus and flange, here’s a brief explanation: Chorus is created using a slower set of delay times on a secondary, parallel signal. Flange uses shorter delay times, and high-band flange the shortest. On the Mod.One, a pair of knobs—one for lower limit and one for upper limit—allow users to set that range of delay times. The lower limit knob has a max delay of 31 mS and a minimum delay of 1.9 ms. The upper limit knob ranges from 1.9 ms to .5 ms. Within those ranges, you’ll find the difference between chorus and flanging, and the position of the two knobs, rather than a switch, determines which effect you’re using. Ultimately, I’m a firm believer that we should use our ears and not get hung up on definitions when listening to an effect. The Mod.One is a great example. Determining exact delay times and whether you’re chorusing or flanging is inexact but ultimately it doesn’t matter. What matters is what sounds good.
The lower limit/upper limit controls might frustrate purists that want to toggle between a clearly defined chorus and flange tone. But Mod.One’s controls, and its central premise, are all about sound sculpting and opening up creative options. And options abound: LFO speed, for example, reaches up to 20 seconds long when using the tap-tempo switch. Six waveform options also widen the sonic lane.
Let’s Get Exponential
The Mod.One is powerful in a literal sense. The active volume control provides plenty of juice, and is capable of really pushing whatever comes next in your chain. That lends a gooey vibe to everything that passes through the pedal. Whether you use that power to drive your amp or not, the combo of gain and all-analog circuitry give the Mod.One a warm, thick voice. This is not just another metallic-sounding flange device.
I found myself stomping on the Mod.One to add space and texture to rhythms, riffs, and leads that cover a lot of range. Sometimes, I was looking for subtlety—Andy Summers on “Walking on the Moon,” for example. For that, I kept the enhance knob, which determines the intensity of the effect, toward lower settings, and kept the speed on the slowest part of its range, which generates molasses-like movement. For more obvious results, I nudged the speed and enhance knobs. There’s a lot of play in each control, so it doesn’t take much to get things moving in a different direction. The enhance control can even self-oscillate at the top of its range, where more extreme sounds live.
Each of these controls interacts differently with alternate waveform settings, making the possibilities exponential. If there’s one complaint I have about the Mod.One—and I do think it’s just one—it’s that it’s hard to tell which waveform is selected. When experimenting by ear, that’s not the worst thing, but when searching for specific settings, it can be hard to tell if the single LED lights up in a sine, triangle, or other pattern. Eventually I got better at telling the difference, but I didn’t always nail it.
To get some ’70s pseudo-cosmiche tones for a recording project, I rocked the triangle, sine, and hypertriangle waveforms at varying levels of excess. And all three were useful for thickening up high-fretted chordage rather than just the crystalline kind of flange I tend to associate with Prince. I found true excess with the step wave selected and the enhance cranked to its fullest, and there are many experimental sounds to be heard in these wilder places. With so many variables at play, I know there is a lot to be discovered still, which makes the Mod.One compelling.
The Verdict
The Mod.One is a powerful flange and chorus with a strong, recognizable character and wide range. It’s not a do-it-all kind of modulator meant to compete with digital units. But this all-analog device can deliver texture to your sound at dosages that are easily controlled. The unique sculpting possibilities make it exciting and refreshing, and in my time with the pedal, I was impressed with how much I hadn’t yet discovered. It strikes a difficult balance between a quick learning curve and the kind of depth that’ll keep it in heavy rotation for a long time to come. It simply sounds excellent, too.
You might know Tim Shaw, but you've heard his work. He's a lifelong guitar nut that's shaped the sound of your heroes. He's learned from Bill Lawrence, resuscitated the vintage-spec PAF for Gibson, and currently has developed dozens of new and updated pickups for Fender, including the popular Shawbucker and revived the heralded CuNiFe Wide Range humbuckers. But that's just the start of his story, enjoy the hour-long chat host by John Bohlinger. Sponsored by StewMac: https://stewmac.sjv.io/APO2ED
Whenever I’m asked a question about learning, it’s almost always followed by an inquiry as to how long that thing might take to learn. Ultimately, the student wants to know exactly how much they should practice, and when they should expect to see results.
We’ve talked about expectations versus reality before in this column, so I won’t go into too much detail about how I perceive my practice time. But in short, I try to have no expectations and instead enjoy the process of doing the work until the skill comes to me naturally.
But the question still stands: How much should we practice? Would you feel good if I said an hour a day will fix everything you’re having trouble with? Would you be shocked if I said 20 minutes a day beats almost all other practice plans? Would you take a photo of this column and share it on social media, telling everyone that I’m a lunatic because I said I used to practice 8–12 hours a day when I was younger?
The truth is, those three approaches all work. At least, they have all worked for me. I have been through periods of my life where one hour a day felt fantastic, because I was touring and recording so much that I really just needed maintenance and small chunks of time to make tiny adjustments to my playing. When I became a father, 20 minutes felt almost impossible to maintain because I was delirious from lack of sleep and couldn’t concentrate on my granola at breakfast, nevermind in-depth explorations of new musical ideas for hours on end. And when I was in my teens, and literally every aspect of the bass and of music was new to me, 10 hours a day felt like it was never going to be enough to get to where I wanted to be.
The older I get, however, the more my approach has shifted to be in line with some of the non-musical things in my life. At 46 years old, for instance, I’m very aware of how I want to live the last decades of my life. I want to live happy, mobile, pain- and injury-free, and have a sharp and active mind that lets me be present with my family and friends. That requires consistency in nutrition and training now, to help mitigate the less-than-optimal circumstances you often associate with old age: falls, brittle bones, disease, and disability in general.
“When I became a father, 20 minutes felt almost impossible to maintain because I was delirious from lack of sleep and couldn’t concentrate on my granola at breakfast, nevermind in-depth explorations of new musical ideas for hours on end.”
Much like the balanced nutrient intake and resistance and cardiovascular training required to build and maintain lean muscle mass, flexibility, and stability for a high quality of life in my later years, I’m finding some parallels in my musical pursuits. Whereas the goal in my teenage years was to be able to attain the dizzying technical prowess of my heroes, that doesn’t last and doesn’t mean as much later in life—especially when you simply don’t have the physical ability to play that way anymore.
I’m moving more towards strengthening a rock-solid foundation of musical language that allows me to express myself far more effectively than some flashy solo on a gig no one is going to remember. It allows me to write more creatively, record more often, and create a body of work with some meaning to it, far beyond the pyrotechnics of technique that we see plastered all over the internet these days.
And this is where we come to exactly what that takes—the answer to the age-old question of how long we should practice each day.
The answer is to set yourself a goal that you’re actually going to stick to. Much like cutting down on sugar in your diet or alcohol consumption: Can you cut both of those things out cold turkey, or do you need something more realistic that you’ll actually stick to? Six days of eating clean and a cheat day on the weekend? There are obviously dozens of ways to approach any aspect of lifestyle or music practice goals, but keep asking yourself what is realistic for you, what will you stick to, and you will be on your way to a far happier time with your instrument right away.
I find that once the pressure is off, and I’m not constantly telling myself I suck because I didn’t hit the six-hour mark in the practice room, my playing blooms in places I was least expecting it. Although the practice journal, recording yourself and listening back, and planning what you need to work on are important, I always try to not think about yesterday or worry about tomorrow. I can only work on what’s right here in front of me today, and that simplifies and improves the trajectory of my playing.
