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Poindexter at the Crossroads - Aug. '19 Ex. 3

Garnett hits the floor with his Huss & Dalton dreadnought. The guitars are hand-built in Staunton, Virginia, at the company founded by Jeff Huss and Mark Dalton.

NV Photography

The guitarist’s experimental string band music opens new vistas for bluegrass, jazz, classical composition, and improv on his stunning debut album, Imitation Fields.

Ben Garnett’s debut album opens bravely, almost daring the casual listener to give up before anything recognizable as a tune emerges from the speakers. Instead, we hear a collage of abstract sound—a tape spooling backwards, spectral voices, and stringed instruments being rubbed and scraped. Out of these two minutes of gentle cacophony, an angular theme emerges, tentative at first, played on banjo and fiddle. Then the idea organizes itself into the punchy, gypsy-derived melody of “Thirty One Mouths.” And with that, the remarkable Imitation Fields gets underway.

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This feature-rich distortion palette will sculpt shred with precision.

Lots of range. Easy and intuitive to use, despite a detailed control set.

Even with the gain set to zero, it stays crunchy, so you can’t use the EQ and noise gate for cleaner sounds.

$249

Ibanez Pentatone Preamp
ibanez.com

4.5
4
4.5
4

During a long-ago brief dalliance with shredderism, I bought a Boss Metal Zone. Although that phase didn’t quite stick, my affinity for the iconic distortion pedal did. There’s something about that EQ section that’s always felt so appealing. When I plugged in the Ibanez Pentatone, I felt like I was reliving that first dive into the high-gain zone.

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Tuttle and Strings first recorded together on Strings’ 2017 release, Turmoil & Tinfoil.

Photo by Alysse Gafkjen

Looking back on their latest releases, the two bluegrass phenoms and friends sit down with one another to talk musical heritage, stage fright, gear, and more.

In any music scene, it’s natural that talented contemporaries will find each other and form fast, harmonious fraternity. It’s no surprise, then, that Nashville-based bluegrass virtuosos Billy Strings and Molly Tuttle became close friends and collaborators as early as 2017—when they were both just 24—and, as is now somewhat common knowledge, were one-time roommates. Tuttle was first featured on Strings’ full-length release, Turmoil & Tinfoil, and a few years later, Strings guested on Tuttle’s Grammy-winning 2022 album, Crooked Tree, on the track “Dooley’s Farm,” while performing together often in the interim.

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