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 | Download Example 1 Fingerstyle - mic'd, then amped |
| Download Example 2 Flatpicking - mic'd, then amped |
| Download Example 3 Capo 5th fret - mic'd, then amped |
| Amped segments recorded through L.R. Baggs Core 1 Acoustic Reference Monitor | |
Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice
The three-piece back has wings of ovangkol, which is a species of Guibourtia that comes from tropical West Africa, with an Indian rosewood wedge. The sides are also ovangkol. The top is solid Sitka spruce with a bold herringbone rosette—and I am a sucker for herringbone. The specs online say the neck is “select hardwood” and this looks like a nice piece of mahogany, which is a solid choice.
The fretboard and bridge, however, are not at all traditional, and not even wood. They’re something called Richlite, which is a “paper-based fiber composite used for a variety of architectural, food service, recreational and industrial applications,” including musical instruments, according to the company. I have to confess, I’m a bit of an ebony snob when it comes to fingerboards and bridges, but this stuff really took me by surprise. It feels amazingly like ebony, and I would be willing to bet it’s more stable and durable (whether or not ebony adds to the tone of a guitar is not a debate I’m willing to go into here). This Richlite stuff, which contains phenolic resin, feels great and the guitar plays like buttah, so I like it. We have a 1-3/4" nut and a 2-1/4" saddle, which is ideal for fingerstyle playing, and even though the fretboard has inlays, the Richlite was more consistent-feeling with the shell than ebony, and they didn’t bug the crap out of me like inlays sometimes do.
The bindings and endpiece are a material called Boltaron, which is a laminated plastic used in everything from aircraft components to credit cards. The nut and saddle are Corian, another new-fangled material that’s proven to be tone-worthy in both acoustic and electric guitars. Now, contrast all this high-tech, alternative material with the classic, quintessential Martin look; this guitar looks like something my grandfather would have played on his front porch in southern Iowa. The shape has a vintage vibe about it, and the simple b/w/b perfling and herringbone rosette make it look completely charming. The mortise-and-tenon neck joint is another nod to tradition, and feels as rock-solid as it gets. The glossy top and satin back and sides are pleasing as well, and the satin neck is fast and completely comfortable.
All Shook Up
The pickup and onboard digital preamp are from Roland, and I have to say, they’re seriously cool. The pre is called the COSM, for Composite Object Sound Modeling. We’ve seen quite a bit of this technology in the acoustic guitar world recently, and while some of it is very intriguing, I’m not sure there’s not a fair way to go before they really get what they’re after. The Roland preamp has a lot of truly useful features, but is so intuitive that I was able to figure out most of it before finding the manual (although I’m not a novice when it comes to acoustic technologies).
Here’s basically what it’s about: pickups are handy but mostly don’t sound that great, and almost never sound like the real deal. In order to add what’s missing back into the pickup signal, Roland created this cool algorithm that simulates the body sound and gives you that breath and richness that most pickups aren’t able to capture. I would say they’re 75 percent successful, and that’s really good. The preamp has several built-in reverbs and three different body models that you can edit to taste. The 7-band EQ is easy to use and very responsive. I plugged into my trusty Baggs Core 1 Reference Monitor, and as I heard the harbingers of feedback stirring, I pressed the Anti-Feedback button and the feedback was instantly busted and my tone was intact. That right there is worth its weight in gold.
The Body knob is the heart of the modeling part, and dialing from left to right is quite an adventure. I found straight-up to around one o’clock to be the most musical positions, and preferred model 2 out of the three defaults. The preamp also has a tuner that is super easy to read and remarkably quick to respond. Batteries are housed in a chamber in the side of the lower bout, so they’re easy to access—gotta love that.
Shut up and play the damn thing
Acoustically, it’s a decent sounding guitar, though I wasn’t blown away by the tone. It’s bright and snappy, and as I said before, plays like buttah. There isn’t anything this guitar won’t let you do. It is a pro-level guitar that requires no compromise from a player, at least none that I could find, and I took it for a pretty wild ride. I can’t imagine any player hitting the wall with this guitar. It just wants to play.
Plugged in, you get to play with the EQ and the models, almost like paintingwith the tone. You can make it sound as rich and full and vibrant as you want, or snarky and raw, or sizzling and poppy. It’s kind of like a video game for your ears. In a recording studio, this could be very useful mixed with a mic’d signal to bloom up into a mix, smash your way through it, or dance on top of it. It’s a true stage-ready axe, light and comfortable, perfectly playable and versatile as it gets.
The Final Mojo
I wish the acoustic sound was a little more irresistible, but that’s not what this guitar is about. It’s about walking out on a stage and kicking ass, and it does that extremely well. It’s also a guitar you can feel good about, from its solid made-in-America pedigree to its sustainable mojo.
Buy if...
you need a stage-ready guitar that will let you play anything your heart desires.
Skip if...
you just want to cuddle on the couch with a heart-meltingly gorgeous sounding playmate.
Rating...
Street $1650 - Martin Guitar - martinguitar.com |
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.