
The newest pedal in Supercool's lineup, designed to honor the classic RAT distortion pedal with more tone customization, a dead-quiet circuit response, and an eye-catching design.
The Barstow Bat is designed to offer a versatile 3-band EQ section to create colors and tones beyond that of its influence, with a surprisingly quiet and calculated circuit under the hood. For even more sonic versatility, the TURBO button swaps between classic silicon RAT distortion and a more open and aggressive TURBO RAT LED clipping mode.
Features
The Barstow Bat highlights include:
- Classic RAT Distortion with a super-quiet noise floor
- Eye-catching graphics based on the work of Hunter Thompson and Ralph Steadmanās iconic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
- Massive output volume
- Active isolated 3-band EQ for a wide range of tones
- Selectable clipping modes (Standard or TURBO)
- True Bypass on/off switch
- 9-volt DC power from external supply, no battery compartment.
- Hand assembled in Peterborough, Canada
- LIMITED EDITION BLACK version available until 2025
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Tighten up your rhythm playing by focusing on how to get a great sound, balancing your wrist and elbow, and understanding how to subdivide rhythms.
Each night of a G3 tour ends with an all-out jam and on Reunion Live, the trio hits classics by Cream, Hendrix, and Steppenwolf. āWhen you hear each guy solo, you can hear how weāve changed through the years,ā says Vai.
Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, and Eric Johnson reflect on their groundbreaking tour with a fiery live album that took nearly 30 years to make.
āWhen youāre young, youāre attracted to all these [guitar] ideasādo this, do that,ā says Eric Johnson. āYouāre like a sponge. If you get yourself out of the way, get rid of the ego, and stay open, you remain a student your whole life. But at the same time, you get to the point where youāre like, āThereās only so much time, and I donāt need to learn this and that.ā There are things that Joe [Satriani] or Steve [Vai] do that Iāll never be able to do.ā
Some guitarists would find that notion depressingāof finally extinguishing the naive youthful fire to master every technique on their instrument. (Itās probably easier to find peace when youāre one of the worldās most revered players, with platinum sales and Grammys on your rĆ©sumĆ©.) But when Johnson looks at Satriani and Vai, his fellow virtuosos on the 2024 G3 reunion tour, the idea of āletting goā puts a smile on his face.
āAlthough we stay open, we define some of our journey,ā says Johnson. āWe canāt be everything to everybody. Then you start appreciating what someone else is doing even more.ā
That sense of refinement is crucial to the story of G3, the triple-guitar tour conceived by Satriani and launched alongside Johnson and Vai in 1996. Over the years, the event has morphed to incorporate players from just about every style: from blues-rock (Kenny Wayne Shepherd) to prog-metal (Dream Theaterās John Petrucci) to hard rock (Uli Jon Roth) to the eerie soundscapes of King Crimsonās Robert Fripp. Far from a rote shred-fest, itās a celebration of the electric guitarās unlimited possibilities. And Satrianiās been thinking a lot about that idea following the G3 reunion tour, which ran for 13 dates last January, spawned a new concert album (Reunion Live), and will eventually birth a documentary helmed by his son ZZ.Recorded live at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles, Reunion Live documents the culmination of a 13-date tour that brought the trio together for the first time since the original tour in 1996.
āHe had an interesting idea for a film,ā Satriani says. āOur first G3 show happened the week he turned four, and we decided we were always going to take him with us. He wanted to do a film not only about that and about G3 but also his whole point of view growing up with a very strange father and this community of guitar players. He wanted to know their perspective on guitar playing and music and this life heās been a part of.ā
The younger Satriani grew even more ambitious, proposing that the OG G3s [OG3s?] get together for another tour. āZZ wanted to see what it was really like, after decades of traveling with me and the different bands, to get onstage and play,ā Satch says. āIt all sort of happened in those last two shows at the Orpheum in Los Angeles. ZZ came on and played a song, and that sort of brought the film full-circleāfrom the four-year-old to the 32-year-old playing onstage with his dad. The [as-yet-unreleased] film has really developed into this epic story about guitar players. Eric and Steve have been so generous with their time, letting ZZ interview them about music, guitar, and what it means to them. But thatās really how the whole thing got started this time around.ā
ā30 years later, you can really see more of the dynamic difference in our go-to notes and riffs. Joe is more Joe now; Eric is more Eric now; and Iām more me now.āāSteve Vai
Reunion Live unfolds like the actual G3 shows, with miniature heavy-hitter sets from each artist (you get Vaiās āFor the Love of God,ā Satrianiās āSurfing With the Alien,ā Johnsonās āDesert Roseā), followed by a trio of generous, triple-guitar cover-song jamsāin this case, ripping versions of Robert Johnsonās blues staple āCrossroads,ā Steppenwolfās open-road proto-metal anthem āBorn to Be Wild,ā and Jimi Hendrixās hard-psych powerhouse āSpanish Castle Magic.ā The latter, fronted by Johnson, is the albumās centerpiece: 11-plus minutes of instrumental fireworks that perfectly showcase each playerās distinct flavor. Toward the end, the groove lays back into a quiet, funky simmerāthe perfect platform for an onslaught of tasteful flourishes and ungodly shredding.
Back in 1996, the trio barnstormed across the country and laid waste to guitar nerds everywhere with a scorching version of Zappaās āMy Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama.ā
Photo by Ebet Roberts
āThe thing I liked about that [choice] was that itās very common to play a Hendrix song in a jam, but most people play the usual suspects,ā says Vai. āEricās Hendrix catalog runs deep, and heās played āSpanish Castle Magicā on multiple occasions, and Iāve played it in the past. When it came up on this G3, I was very excited because itās a great song to play. Itās just got a great feel to it, and the groove for soloing is very open. I was very happy to see that.ā
āI hate the word ācompetition.ā But if we didnāt want to challenge each other, we wouldnāt have agreed to do the tour.āāJoe Satriani
āI remember doing so many cover songs over the past few decades, and every once in a while you come up with an all-purpose song that anyone, from any walk of life, can come join you on,ā says Satriani. āAnd then you have these other songs that really shine a light on an individualās foundation as a player and some of their early inspirations. I know that all three of us were so into Jimi Hendrix. I love doing that song. Iād do any Hendrix song. Eric and I have a lot of experience going out with the Experience Hendrix [tribute] tour. He figured into our early musical livesāeven before I played guitar, I was a big Hendrix fan.ā
āCrossroadsā is also fascinating on many levels. Sure, itās hard for any good rock band to screw this one up, and it could be the most obvious pick for any guitar jam, but the songās simple blues structure also allows for a delicious whiplash, magnifying the vast differences in tonality and note choice between each guitarist.
āAt first, when āCrossroadsā came in, I was like, āOK, itās this classic rock song.ā But once youāre onstage and playing it, the riff is so great,ā says Vai. āItās robust. When you hear each guy solo, you can hear how weāve changed through the years. Not just usāany guitar player who sticks with their craft goes through various evolutions into different directions. Some can stagnate, but youāre usually inching toward something different. Most of the time physicality is involved in that. When I hear āSpanish Castle Magicā or āCrossroads,ā the stuff on this jam, my ears are listening to 30 years ago, in a sense, when we would trade. Today, 30 years later, you can really see more of the dynamic difference in our go-to notes and riffs. Joe is more Joe now; Eric is more Eric now; and Iām more me now. Iāve abandoned trying to sound conventional in any way.ā The more they sound like the definitive versions of themselves, as on this G3 tour, the more in tune with each other they seem to be.Joe Satrian's Gear
The G3 mastermind would never use the word ācompetition,ā but feels like his fellow G3ers wouldnāt show up if they didnāt want to be challenged.
Photo by Jon Luini
Guitars
- Various Ibanez JS Models (tuned to Eb standard)
Amps
- Marshall JVM410HJS
- Two Marshall 1960B 4x12 cabinets
Effects
- Vox Big Bad Wah
- Boss OC-3
- DigiTech SubNUp
- MXR EVH Flanger
- DigiTech Whammy
- Boss DD-8 (in effects loop)
- Voodoo Lab Pedal Power
Strings & Picks
- DāAddario XL110 (.010ā.046)
- DāAddario Satch Grip Picks
āI would listen to Joe and Steve, and I would marvel at the guitar playing and the consistency of how great it was, but for me, it was [also] an opportunity to look beyond [it],ā says Johnson. āIt was a bit of an epiphany doing this tour because I tuned into the energy they had, the songs they were writing, the sounds they were getting, the shows they were doing. It even made the guitar playing more interesting because there was another dynamic I was tuning in to more. Not that it wasnāt always important, but as you get older, you try to see the whole hemisphere and what that means to the audience. Itās a win-win because it doesnāt take anything away from the guitarāit makes it more interesting to have encased in that bigger thing. I noticed that more this time, which made me feel good.ā
āWe canāt be everything to everybody.āāEric Johnson
The G3 tour, and particularly the encore jams, are fascinating at the conceptual level: taking players largely renowned as soloists, and forcing them to share stages and trade licksāworking to compliment each otherās playing instead of simply flexing their muscles and drawing on some primal competitive drive.
āThe ego is the definition of competition,ā says Vai. āIts perspective is, āHow do I stack up? How do I rise above? How do I sell more, make more, have more, be more than anyone else?ā This is nothing personal to meāthis is in the collective of humanity. Ego can wreak havoc in your life and cause a lot of dysfunction and stress. You donāt know it because youāre unconscious of the way the ego can be competitive. More in my earlier days, in the background, there was a perspective of competitiveness. This doesnāt just go for G3, but it was never in a playing way. I felt, āMy playing is so abstract and bizarre that thereās no one else doing this weird stuff.ā Of course, this is still ego.ā
Steve Vai's Gear
āWhen I hear āSpanish Castle Magicā or āCrossroads,ā the stuff on this jam, my ears are listening to 30 years ago, in a sense, when we would trade,ā remembers Vai.
Photo by Jon Luini
Guitars
- Ibanez mirror-topped JEM āBOā
- Ibanez John Scofield JSM
- Ibanez JEM 7VWH āEVOā
- Ibanez Universe 7-String
- Ibanez Hydra Triple-Neck Guitar
- Ibanez JEM 7VWH āFLO IIIā
- Ibanez PIA (tuned to Eb standard)
Amps
- Synergy SYN-2 Preamp
- VAI Synergy Module
- B-MAN Synergy Module
- Fractal Audio AXE-FX III Turbo
- Fryette LX-II Tube Power Amp
- Carvin V412 cabinets with Celestion Vintage 30 speakers
Effects
- Lehle A/B Box
- Dunlop 95Q Wah
- Ibanez Jemini Distortion/Overdrive
- DigiTech Whammy DT
- CIOKS DC-7 Power Supply
Strings, Picks, & Accessories
- Ernie Ball Skinny Top Heavy (.010ā.052)
- Ernie Ball Regular Slinky (.010ā.046)
- Ernie Ball Super Slinky (.009ā.042)
- Ernie Ball 7-String Set (.009ā.056)
- DiMarzio Cables
- Electric Fan
- InTuneGP GrippX Picks (1.14 mm and 1.50 mm)
āBut when it came to Joe, it was a very different dynamic because he was my [guitar] teacherāhe taught me how to play,ā remembers Vai. āJoe was my mentor. I admired him. We were joined at the hip throughout our careers. In the earlier days, you listened to the other guy, and thereās the perspective. One is a very egoic perspective, which sees things as competition. The other perspective is, āWhat can I learn here? What can I get from this thatās going to improve my tools?ā Boy, thereās plenty of that in every G3 tour, every situation Iāve ever been in. But itās a perspective only you can choose. The feeling of competition, I donāt like it. If someone is selling more records or playing faster or tastier or their songs are better, it behooves me to see how I can gain on a personal level from that. If I was the coach of a basketball team, Iād say, āIt doesnāt matter if you win this game. Itās not as important as doing your very best.ā In reality, the only one youāre ever competing with is yourselfāyour bar.ā
āIf someone is selling more records or playing faster or tastier or their songs are better, it behooves me to see how I can gain on a personal level from that.āāSteve Vai
Satriani shares a similar sentimentāthat being ācomplimentaryā in a project like G3 is a real talent and a gift. Working on the documentary has put him in a retrospective mode, thinking about past tours and how theyāve worked to be more expansive and, perhaps, even provocative in their presentation.
Eric Johnson's Gear
āWe canāt be everything to everybody. Then you start appreciating what someone else is doing even more,ā says Johnson.
Photo by Jim Summaria
Guitars
- 1958 FenderĀ Stratocaster
- Fender Eric Johnson Signature Stratocaster
- Fender Stratocaster with internal preamp
Amps
- Fender Bandmaster Reverb
- 50-watt Marshall JTM45 Super Tremolo
- 100-watt Marshall JTM45 Super Tremolo
- Two-Rock Classic Reverb Signature
- ā60s stereo Marshall cabinet with Electro-Voice EVM12L speakers
- ā60s Marshall cabinet with vintage 25-watt Celestion Greenback speakers
Effects
- EP-3 Echoplex
- TC Electronic Chorus
- Ibanez Tube Screamer
- Dunlop Fuzz Face
- MXR M-166 Digital Time Delay
- Dunlop Cry Baby Wah
- BK Butler Tube Driver
- Electro-Harmonix Deluxe Memory Man
- Bill Webb Fuzz Pedal
Strings & Picks
- DāAddario Pure Nickel (.010ā.046)
- Dunlop Jazz III picks
āYesterday I was searching for an original print of a photo from [the G3 tour] in ā97,ā he says, āwhere Robert Fripp was opening the shows, unannounced, hidden behind a wall of gear. That was his requestāto play as people were filing into the venues. I found this great photo of Robert onstage with his guitar and four-year-old ZZ standing next to him holding a plastic pailāI think it was at Jones Beach. It reminded me of how crazy the notion was at the time of Robert joining up with the tour. But he was so excited about it and wanted to do it. We had fantastic times traveling together and hanging out backstage and getting to know each other on that particular tour, and that set the tone for meāknowing that, not only did I have comrades like Eric and Steve, who felt the same way that I did about collaboration in a live setting, but now there was Robert and Kenny Wayne Shepherd, and the concept of G3 started to really catch fire. It was really heartwarming to know that this sort of gunslinger attitude that existed in the ā80s about guitar players could be challenged. We could create something really inclusive about different styles and generations of players and take it on the road. That came back to me when I saw that photo.ā
āI hate the word ācompetition,āā Satriani says elsewhere, surveying G3 history. āBut if we didnāt want to challenge each other, we wouldnāt have agreed to do the tour. We get to hear each otherās sets, which is greatāwe donāt often get to do that when weāre off on our own tours. And then we get to stand next to each other and see what just pops out of nowhere, what each artist decides to throw out as an improvisation. Every night is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. If you can somehow work that into your musical life, youāre really luckyāso I count myself really lucky.ā
YouTube It
Watch Satriani, Johnson, and Vai tear through Creamās classic interpretation of āCrossroads.ā In this video, directed by ZZ Satriani, you can get a feel for the history the trio shares with vintage G3 clips and more.
Meet Siccardi Number 28: a 5-ply, double-cut solidbody tribute to Paul Bigsbyās āHezzy Hallā guitar.
Reader: Mark Huss
Hometown: Coatesville, PA
Guitar: Siccardi Number 28
May we all have friends like Ed Siccardiāalong with a rare stash of tonewoods and inspiration to pay tribute to a legendary luthier.
I have too many guitars (like at least some of you Iām sure), but my current No. 1 is a custom guitar made for me by my friend Ed Siccardi. Ed is an interesting and talented fellow, a retired mechanical engineer who has amazing wood and metal shops in his basement. He also has an impressive collection of tonewoods, including rarities like African mahogany and some beautiful book-matched sets. He likes to build acoustic guitars (and has built 26 of them so far), but decided he wanted to make me an electric. The fruit of this collaboration was his Number 27, a Paul Bigsby tribute with a single-cut bodyālooking very much like what Bigsby made for Merle Travis. Note that Bigsby created this single-cut body and āFender-styleā headstock way before Gibson or Fender had adopted these shapes. This was a really nice guitar, but had some minor playing issues, so he made me another: Number 28.
Number 28 is another Paul Bigsby tribute, but is a double cutaway a la the Bigsby āHezzy Hallā guitar. This guitar has a 5-ply solid body made of two layers of figured maple, cherry, swamp ash, and another layer of cherry. The wood is too pretty to cover up with a pickguard. The tailpiece is African ebony with abalone inlays and the rock-maple neck has a 2-way truss rod and extends into the body up to the bridge. It has a 14" radius and a zero fret. Therefore, there is no nut per se, just a brass string spacer. I really like zero frets since they seem to help with the lower-position intonation on the 3rd string. The fretboard is African ebony with abalone inlays and StewMac #148 frets. The peghead is overlaid front and back with African ebony and has Graph Tech RATIO tuners. The guitar has a 25" scale length and 1.47" nut spacing. There are two genuine ivory detail inlays: One each on the back of the peghead and at the base of the neck. The ivory was reclaimed from old piano keys.
This is Number 27, 28ās older sibling and a single-cut Bigsby homage. Itās playing issues led to the creation of its predecessor.
I installed the electronics using my old favorite Seymour Duncan pairing of a JB and Jazz humbuckers. The pickup selector is a standard 3-way, and all three 500k rotary controls have push-pull switches. There are two volume controls, and their switches select series or parallel wiring for their respective pickup coils. The switch on the shared tone control connects the bridge pickup directly to the output jack with no controls attached. This configuration allows for a surprisingly wide variety of sounds. As an experiment, I originally put the bridge volume control nearest the bridge for āpinkyā adjustment, but in practice I donāt use it much, so I may just switch it back to a more traditional arrangement to match my other guitars.
āCrank That Sh*t Up!ā Greg Koch on Teaching, Mistakes, Modeling, and Modern Blues
The Milwaukee-based āguitaristās guitaristā doles out decades of midwest wisdom on this episode of Wong Notes.
You might not know Greg Koch, but weāll bet your favorite guitarist does. In 2012, Fender called the Wisconsin blues-guitar phenom one of the top 10 best unsung guitarists, and in 2020, Guitar World listed Koch among the 15 best guitar teachers. Heās been inducted into the Wisconsin Area Music Industry Hall of Fame. Koch is a bonafide midwest guitar god.
He joins Cory Wong on this round of Wong Notes for this meeting of the Middle-America minds, where the duo open with analysis of music culture in Wisconsin and MinnesotaāKoch taught at Saint Paulās now-shuttered McNally Smith College of Music, which Wong attended. Koch and Wong zero in on the blues roots of most modern music and talk through soloing theories: It can be as easy or as hard as you want it to be, but Koch shares that he likes to āpaint himself into a corner,ā then get out of it.
Koch and Wong swap notes on the pressures of studio performance versus the live realm, and how to move on from mistakes made onstage in front of audiences. Plus, Koch has created scores of guitar education materials, including for Hal Leonard. Tune in to find out what makes a good guitar course, how to write a guitar book, Kochās audio tips for crystalline live-stream sessions, and why he still prefers tube amps: āI like to crank that sh*t up!ā