“I wouldn’t say that All Washed Up was my first choice for the title of the new record,” says Cheap Trick guitarist Rick Nielsen from the living room of his Rockford, Illinois, home. “But hey, I’ve always said that if you have to tell people you’re cool, then you’re not!”
Nielsen and his longtime bandmates, vocalist and guitarist Robin Zander and bassist Tom Petersson, are not among those who need to toot their own horns. Six decades into a career that has seen the band inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, invited to collaborate with John Lennon, name-checked by Jerry Garcia, and cited as a primary influence by bands as disparate as Mötley Crüe and Nirvana, Cheap Trick certainly have nothing left to prove. Yet the group, whose deft ability to combine muscular riffs, edgy subject matter and unforgettable power-pop hooks continues to tour relentlessly—they’ve long since passed the 5,000-show mark—and record with a regularity that might wind bands half, or even a third, their age.
All Washed Up, the band’s 21st studio album, captures a Cheap Trick that’s still in top form and able to effortlessly deliver snarling rockers like the swaggering “Riff That Won’t Quit” and thunderous “Bet It All” that harken back to such early classics as “Stiff Competition” and “Daddy Should Have Stayed in High School.” The group’s ability to shift gears and settle into Beatles-inspired midtempo numbers is also on clear display, and tracks like the swirling “The Twelve Gates” and ethereal “The Best Thing” are melodically and lyrically compelling enough to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with decades-old fan favorites like “Downed” and “Heaven Tonight.”
“Luckily, we never progressed,” says Nielsen of the band’s ability to remain on musical track. “We still like the Beatles. We still like the Stones and AC/DC. We still love the Who. And most importantly, we still love making records.”
Rick and Robin onstage; note Nielsen’s “Uncle Pepper” Hamer, custom-finished for him for Cheap Trick’s performance of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 2009.
Photo by Jeff Daly
RICK NIELSEN’S LIVE RIG
Guitars
Various Hamer Standards
Fender Custom ShopTribute Series Jeff Beck Esquire
“It’s one the few things that we’re actually really good at,” Petersson adds from his home in Nashville. “We’re lucky enough to still have an outlet to release our music, so we send ideas back and forth and what we end up doing is what we as music fans would like to hear from a record. What we’re not as good at though,” he continues, “is picking out what otherpeople want to hear!”
There to assist with this last task is long-time Cheap Trick producer and self-professed super fan Julian Raymond (the Struts, Brian Setzer). “Julian, even though at this point we basically treat him like a member of the band, has the perspective of what a fan would like us to do, and it really brings out the best in us,” says Petersson. Adds Nielsen, “He knows us better than we know ourselves. He’ll say, ‘I really liked what you did on “He's a Whore” from your first album. Can you get that sound and do something like that here?’”
“At this point in their careers, the guys in Cheap Trick don't care about anything but being happy and doing what they want to do,” says Raymond, also calling from Nashville, where the bulk of All Washed Up was tracked at Blackbird Studios. “Those first four Cheap Trick records from the late ’70s—the debut, In Color,Heaven Tonight, and then Dream Police, those are the best songs on earth,” he continues. “The only problem is that the band sounds all slendered down, because the producer of several of those albums was looking to get on the radio and get hits. It’s a much different vibe from what the band does live, which is so brash and heavy. So now we try to capture that feel and power whenever we make a record.”
“I’ve always said that if you have to tell people you’re cool, then you’re not!”—Rick Nielsen
Nielsen is widely known as an avid guitar collector, with a stash in the hundreds that includes both incredibly rare and valuable vintage instruments like original late-’50s Gibson Explorers and Les Pauls and off-the-wall custom one-offs like his iconic checkerboard Hamer 5-neck. But he brings only a limited number of guitars with him to the studio. “This time, I had a couple of my Dwights [in the ’60s, Epiphone manufactured guitars under the Dwight brand name for Sonny Shields Music in East St. Louis], a couple of my Hamer Explorer-shaped Standards, a ’59 Les Paul, and a Telecaster. And I just grab the one I think is good for the song,” he says. The sessions also relied on only a trio of guitar amps: a Marshall half stack, a Vox AC30 and one of the Paul Rivera-modified silver-panel Fender Deluxe Reverbs that have been Nielsen’s go-tos since the ’70s.
TOM PETERSSON’S LIVE RIG
Basses
Brooks EXP-12-TP 12-string
Amps
Orange OR30 with Orange 4x12 cab
Fender Super Bassman with Fender 4x12 cab
Effects
Tech 21 SansAmp Bass Driver DI
Strings, Picks, & Accessories
D’Addario EXL170-12 strings
Junger Pyramid picks
Shure AD4Q wireless
Radial JD7 splitter
D’Addario foam earplugs
For Raymond, limiting the number of choices available to Nielsen is crucial to ensuring that the guitarist remains engaged in the creative process. “When you start getting down that road of auditioning 10 different amplifiers and 15 different guitars with Rick, he just gets bored,” says Raymond. “He doesn't have the patience.”
Nielsen likes to work fast when he’s in the studio, often keeping the basic track that was played live with the band. “I know what I want to do and have it down, so I’ll often keep that track and then embellish on it afterwards,” he says. The guitarist also rarely doubles his rhythm tracks exactly, but instead has the guitars engage in a push-and-pull dialogue that introduces tension and a ragged intensity to songs like the album’s title track. “Rick doesn’t double his tracks exactly because he’s sloppy—and I mean that in the best possible way,” Raymond explains. “You can hear what the guitar on the left is doing, and you can hear what the guitar on the right’s doing. That’s what I love about the way he plays. It’s almost kind of a punk-rock style in more of a rock and roll manner, you know?”
“What we end up doing is what we as music fans would like to hear from a record.”—Tom Petersson
“Of course, we could take those tracks and make them match as perfect doubles in Pro Tools,” he continues. “But you don’t want that. That’s not Rick’s sound.”
Where the lead guitar work on All Washed Up is concerned, Nielsen takes one of two approaches: the first, melodic and impeccably structured, like the rotary-speaker enhanced break on the ballad “Best Thing,” and the other, manically chaotic and visceral, like the hair-raising screech fest on “Bet it All.”
“I’m no guitar virtuoso like Satch or Vai, so I don’t try to make something real fast and real cool,” he says. “But I do make it so my solo has something to do with the actual melody of the song. Then when I run out of smart ideas, there can be a lot of noise and unison bends and screeches and all that stuff!”
Nielsen onstage at the Vixen in McHenry, Illinois, with his family band, the Nielsen Trust, on January 10, 2025.
Photo by Jim Summaria
From a producer’s standpoint, Raymond says that, much like when he’s recording the guitarist’s rhythm tracks, cutting Nielsen’s frenetic leads is an exercise in catching lightning in a bottle. “Rick plays guitar like it’s his last day on earth,” he says. “He just bounces off the walls and plays, and it’s so much fun to watch because you don’t have to give him any direction. And he gets those solos quick. It’s just his spirit—the spirit of the way he thinks and plays. You don’t fix that. You don’t try to manipulate that. That’s the soul of Cheap Trick to me.”
“I’m no guitar virtuoso like Satch or Vai, so I don’t try to make something real fast and real cool.”—Rick Nielsen
If Nielsen’s methodology has a seat-of-the-pants spontaneity at its core, Petersson’s approach to recording the bass tracks on All Washed Up is decidedly more considered. “We pretty much used a different bass on every song,” he says. “There were two Gibson Thunderbirds, which have been my go-to recording basses since the beginning of the band, a ’66 non-reverse and a ’64 Thunderbird II. I was introduced to those by [PG columnist] Jol Dantzig, who would end up at Hamer guitars and now builds under his own name. He said, ‘Tom, you’ve got to try these Thunderbirds. They’re really cool.’ To me they're just a little clunkier and dirtier than a P-Bass, and to me, the P-Bass is the best all-around bass ever. I mean, it’s a subtle difference. So, in the end, when it’s on a recording, who can tell the difference? Probably no one!”
True to his word, Petersson also used four Fender Precision basses—a ’53, ’55, ’56, and a ’71—on All Washed Up. “And then a ’65 Jazz Bass with flatwound strings and one with roundwounds, a Rickenbacker 4003 with flatwounds, a 1960 Gibson EBO with a body like a double-cut Les Paul Junior, a Hofner 500/2 Club Bass, and my Gretsch White Falcon 12-string bass,” he adds. Petersson is widely credited with conceiving the 12-string bass, an instrument later adopted by players like Jeff Ament of Pearl Jam and Doug Pinnick of King’s X, but he generally reserves the thunderous buzz of this sometimes-unruly instrument for the stage. “I don’t usually use that much 12-string on the records—mainly just for overdubs,” he explains. “Because I feel it’s like a 12-string guitar; it’s cool, but do you really want to have that on everything? But this time, there’s way more of it on there. We just thought, ‘Why not? Let’s just do the song the way it will sound live.’”
Petersson performs with Cheap Trick at the Songs4Soldiers benefit concert at Bolm-Schuhkraft Park in Columbia, Illinois, on September 16, 2023.
Photo by Jen Gray
Both onstage and in the studio, Petersson’s beefy, overdriven tone booms, growls, and sustains, perfectly complementing his Paul McCartney, John Entwistle, and Ron Wood (when he played with the Jeff Beck Group)-inspired lines and fills. “Tom is my favorite bass player on earth,” says Raymond. “His sound has enormous bottom end, but it’s totally distorted, like he's the rhythm guitar player in the band.”
To achieve his signature sound, Petersson employs a multi-amp setup that can be changed to adapt to the material at hand. “I use a combination of stuff, all through Orange or Hiwatt 4x12 cabinets,” he reveals. “There’s a 30-watt Orange for the distortion, a 300-watt Orange, a 20-watt Hiwatt Maxwatt that was really cool, a 400-watt Hiwatt bass head and then my old Hiwatt Lead 100 that I’ve had since 1972. That was actually the onlyamp that I had when we made the first album.”
And where many bass players customarily also record a clean DI signal to complement their amplified sound, Petersson strongly disapproves of the practice. “I have my sound, so once it’s there, why give people the opportunity to change it?” he says. “Inevitably, it will get blended in there somehow or they’ll just use the direct. I play all my parts with distortion, so can you imagine how lame and plinky it’s going to sound without that? I want it to sound like the Who!”
At the sound of those two last words, Nielsen’s eyes light up and his enthusiasm can’t be contained. “The Who were the ultimate live band,” he interjects. “They were the greatest: loud and nasty and melodic. They had everything, and it was like nobody could keep up with it.”
“Luckily, we never progressed. We still like the Beatles. We still like the Stones and AC/DC.”—Rick Nielsen
“I saw them open for Herman’s Hermits, and when they smashed their gear after only playing for, like, 20 or 25 minutes, I didn’t completely get it,” Petersson chimes in, also switching into fan mode. “But then right after that tour, they were in the States on their own, and I saw them again in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. It was the real deal. Once they built it up to a frenzy at the end, it all made sense. It wasn’t just some fake show of smashing gear. It was like we were losing our minds because it was so great.”
“We’ll be playing a few songs with the Who on their farewell tour in Los Angeles soon, which is amazing,” says Nielsen. “But I remember the first time we played with them, in 1979, at Zeppelinfeld in Nuremberg, Germany—Pete Townshend walked up to me and said, ‘Rick, how’d you get that sound on your live record, At Budokan? And I was like, ‘Pete, you’re the guy that did Live at Leeds! The greatest live album of all time.’”
Nielsen pauses to give his trademark smirk. “What are you asking me for?”
Special thanks to Cheap Trick techs Chet Haun and Mark Newman for their live rig assistance.
Audio announced the release of Temperance™ Pro. Building on the revolutionary foundation of Temperance Lite, which introduced the world's first musical reverb, Temperance Pro adds 29 modal spaces, advanced sequencing capabilities, MIDI control, and specialized modal and temper controls for transforming your spaces in ways that were previously not possible.
Temperance Pro speaks the language of music, operating on the 12-note chromatic scale, letting users create spaces that feel musically intentional rather than incidental. This unique modal approach models reverb as collections of thousands of independent resonators, each one adjustable in real-time for unprecedented ways to shape space.
Pete Bischoff, the Product Owner said of the plug-in “Temperance impresses me on so many levels. The notion that you can recreate a room from thousands of individual resonances, complete with delays, flutters, and other nuances intact just blows my mind. The engineer in me can't figure out how Eventide got them to cooperate so perfectly and how they managed to squeeze them all into a real time effect. The musician in me giggles at the thought of the sheer number of tiny "instruments" playing in concert and what novel sound avenues they could explore.”
Woody Herman, Sr. DSP Engineer with Eventide added, "I've always enjoyed Eventide's willingness to try something different. As an engineer, it's especially rewarding to work on a project that tries to re-think something we've known about and used for a long time. Temperance is a different way of thinking about reverb that I think is new, fun, and hopefully leads people to make creative decisions they normally wouldn't.”
Temperance Pro introduces two controls for advanced shaping of musical texture. Target Select controls when tempering happens in time, choosing whether selected notes bloom with early reflections, with the late reflections during the reverb tail, or both. Note Width defines how many nearby modes are included in each note, with lower settings offering more musical precision and higher settings affecting more of the overall reverb for broader, more pronounced results.
Three powerful note selection methods add depth and creative potential. Manual Mode offers note-roll style input with instant access to chords, scales, modes, or intervals through the Choose Scale dialog. Sequence Mode programs note changes to follow chord progressions with adjustable beat grid and session offset for precise timeline positioning. MIDI Mode provides real-time keyboard control with Octave Repeat, offering an immediate and tactile way to work, whether performing live or sketching ideas in the studio.
Three unique modal controls offer unprecedented ways of shaping space. Position adjusts the balance between early and late reflections, working independently from tempering. Density controls how many modes are active, from full quality reverb to progressively fragmented, lo-fi tones. Offset shifts the center frequencies of all modes by up to ±500Hz independent of temper settings, changing the pitch of the entire space for dramatic results.
Temperance Pro delivers 29 spaces spanning intimate rooms, grand halls, lush mechanical reverbs, and experimental synthetic spaces. The collection includes faithful recreations of legendary acoustic spaces, including several designed by acoustics pioneer Ralph Kessler, alongside original creations built specifically to showcase modal reverb technology.
The plug-in features over 120 creative and production-focused presets including 11 tutorial presets. Professional features include ultra-low latency suitable for live performance, fully automatable controls, Dual Mono mode, A/B comparison states, and Eco Mode for CPU optimization.
Temperance Pro is available for $179 MSRP from Eventide Audio and authorized dealers worldwide. Crossgrade from Temperance Lite is also available for $79. The plug-in supports AAX 64-bit, AU 64-bit, and VST3 64-bit formats on Windows 10+ and macOS 10.14+. For more information visit eventideaudio.com.
This 1958 Les Paul Custom is full of well-earned vibe thanks to a long life of heavy playing.
Every now and then, a holy-grail guitar falls into your lap and makes you do crazy things to get it. In my case, the holy grail is a 1958 GibsonLes Paul Custom from the original owner, Brian, who played it every day like it owed him money.
I’m obsessed with guitars with personality and deep stories—specifically vintage Gibsons—and have a habit of poking around to see what’s out there. I found Brian’s guitar through my buddy Joe at Joe’s Vintage Guitars in Arizona. This guitar was all vibe and dripped energy—a true player’s instrument. That honest playing wear is very important, not only to the history, but to the sound. You see something that’s heavily played and worn, you know it’s going to sound good. I had to have it. Luckily, the old broken headstock made it financially attainable. I consulted my guitar uncles, Doug Myer and Chris Such, who are equally obsessed and they encouraged me to go for it. I didn’t think twice. I pulled my beloved 1938 D’Angelico Excel off the wall and sold it. Joe and I made the deal. He shipped Brian’s guitar to me in NYC.
Customs were Les Paul’s version of the luxurious Gibson L5 or a Super 400. They were made of the highest-quality material. With a mahogany body, multi-ply binding, and upgraded exotic ebony fingerboard featuring mother-of-pearl inlays, the guitar has a classy tuxedo look which exudes elegance.
Only 256 of these guitars were made in 1958 and would have cost $470 with added factory Bigsby, plus $47.50 with a case for a whopping $517.50.
Brian’s serial number is 8 4224—not far from another LPC from 1958 which belonged to Eric Clapton until he gifted it to Albert Lee (8 6320). While clearly a special build, the feature that kept this model from becoming a household name is the “Fretless Wonder” frets that Les Paul loved to play on. These were designed for jazz and Les Paul’s style of playing with heavy flats—a style with more gliding and sliding across the fingerboard as opposed to bending notes.
The pot codes date to the eighth week of 1958 (February), meaning the PAFs are still a proper example of Seth Lover’s original humbucker design, without being potted. All the frequencies and the overtones are still intact.
The capacitors are also rare: .02 uF Phonebook Spragues that were only used in top Gibson models like the Flying V and Explorer. The Brian Custom also came with the patent pending Grover tuners (instead of waffle backs) which were the highest quality of tuner hardware at the time.
But it was the factory Bigsby, cast by Paul Bigsby himself in his workshop in Southern California, that put me over the edge. In my band, Caveman, I only use guitars I’ve made with a Bigsby. It’s become a part of my signature sound. The Bigsby on the Brian Custom is an early example—you very rarely see them with the green felt, tapered shape, and texture in the cast aluminum like this.
“My goal is to keep this guitar a player’s guitar. I believe all guitars need to be played or they will wither and die.”
The only thing I have done since receiving this gem, is replace the frets so it plays perfectly. I put on a special set of La Bella strings that I’ve been working on with my brother Eric from La Bella Strings—a prototype set of super-polished stainless-steel rounds that we will be releasing soon.
What makes the Brian Custom truly special goes far beyond its physicality. The guitar is alive. Brian respected the art of the instrument—he played it every day. It’s rare to see such an honest, beat-up, and absolutely played guitar of this caliber—and even rarer that it belonged to only one person. The divots in the fretboard, the yellowed binding and knobs from nights playing in smoky venues, reflect a lifetime of playing and musicianship. Out of respect for Brian, my goal is to keep this guitar a player’s guitar. I believe all guitars need to be played or they will wither and die. It’s part of my mission to have players feel and understand why guitars like this are so special. To experience how they play, how they sound, to understand the magic. Guitars like Brian’s make you feel things you can’t put into words.
Most importantly, being the caretaker of such special instruments like the Brian Custom directly affects the way I build my Carbonetti Guitars and Olinto Bass instruments. Studying and playing vintage instruments elevates and inspires my craft. When you feel one of my guitars, I want everything to feel soft like a real player’s guitar—rounded edges and a worn-in feel. I aim to create the comfort and familiarity in my instruments that feels like an old friend and doesn’t need explanation. This ’58 custom is one of the greatest examples of this. It’s the official new mascot of the Guitar Shop NYC, and will continue to be played on stages and in studios forever.
Question:What was the most exciting change in your guitar playing this year?
Guest Picker - Brian Dunne
Photo by Marianka Campisi
A: My guitar playing is pretty constantly shifting, but in the last few years, I feel like I’ve really “found it.” And I’d attribute that to a personal change, honestly. I’m no longer afraid to show what I’ve got. I grew up playing, but I was a slightly “embarrassed” guitar player, if that makes sense? I loved indie rock and I loved singer-songwriters, and at that point in my life, I felt like the guitar solo was maybe a gratuitous move, and so for years, I hid my playing abilities. Not only that, but because I was so self-conscious, every time I stepped up for a rare solo, I had so much going on in my head that I never felt free.
I’m in my thirties now, and I would never say I don’t care anymore—I’ll always care about what music means, who it’s for, what it says, what each note indicates to the listener. But I am who I am, and I think that people are their best musical selves when they’re singing and playing at the top of their ability. And that’s what I’m gonna do. You’ll be hearing a lot more guitar on my records from here on out. I’m a proud guitar player, no way around it.
Obsession: Current obsession is a 1973 Tele Deluxe that I just bought!
Reader of the Month - Dave Jackson
A: This last year I’ve noticed that I’m not using a pick very often, and I’m really enjoying the direct contact of fingers and fingernails on strings. Also, I’m using very few effects with no reverb or delay, and that feels like I’m closer to the instrument's vibrations. So I’m just down to a Rothwell Switchblade distortion into my ZT Lunchbox and an Emma TransMORGrifier compressor for clean stuff—and both together for neighbor-friendly feedback.
Also, after 45 years I’ve grown dissatisfied with humbuckers and want single-coil clarity and hi-fi detail but without the hum and buzz. So I’ve been researching noiseless Strat pickups until my eyes got bleary. There’s some Bill Lawrence Wilde pickups on their way to go in my ’80s Squier Strat.
Obsession: Current musical obsessions include Black Sabbath’s Master of Reality. I’m left-handed, so Tony Iommi will always be a hero for me. I’ve also been revisiting Derek Bailey’s solo recordings like Lot ’74. He completely changed the way I think about music when I saw him play in 1986. Free improvisation is the most rewarding kind of music making I know. Ornette Coleman’s Love Call has also been heating up my speakers this week.
Editorial Director - Richard Bienstock
Photo by Carla Fredericks
A: Sweep picking. Not a new concept for someone who grew up listening to metal in the ’80s and ’90s, but as much as I was into fast, technical playing, something about sweeping always left me cold. Too video-game sounding, before that was actually a thing guitarists were trying to sound like! But now my son plays, and one of the solos he tackled this year was Marty Friedman's daunting leads in Megadeth’s “Tornado of Souls.” Like everything else, we played it together. So, more than 30 years after I was hunkering down in my bedroom with the Hal Leonard official Rust in Peace tab book, I was finally sweeping up and down the frets.
Obsession:Cobra Kai, for maybe a third (fourth? fifth?) go-round. It just hits the perfect note of self-aware nostalgia, and the guys behind the score—Zach Robinson and Leo Birenberg—are two of the most imaginative guitar-based composers around. What’s more, they tapped ace ringers like Tim Henson, Andrew Synowiec, Myrone, and even Tosin Abasi to lend a hand, making it essential viewing—and listening—for guitar nerds.
Contributing Editor - Ted Drozdowski
A: Freedom. After recently retiring as editorial director of PG, it seems I’ve been pushing the envelope more—in the disparate directions of tradition and outrage, and feeling more comfortable and relaxed with a guitar in my paws. I think the title made me self-conscious about my playing, which is never a good thing. I’m excited about what happens next!
Obsession: The thrilling, evolutionary period of jazz from the mid 1940s to 1975, thanks to James Kaplan’s extraordinary book 3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the Lost Empire of Cool. It’s reconnected me to this wonderful, diverse, and sometimes extreme, often beautiful music I’ve loved so long, but had lost contact with.
Honing in your warmup routine is an important part of your daily guitar ritual. In this guided practice routine, Tom Butwin takes you through his warmup and will keep you company as you work your way through.
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