Our featured reader designed this guitar with doom metal in mind, then farmed out the building of its components to various companies.
I had Warmoth make the body (rear-routed to avoid the need for a pickguard), and had them paint it as well. They did an amazing job. The neck was made by the Electrical Guitar Company. They were kind enough to put some Gotoh locking tuners on there for me as well. There are a few companies making these necks now, but I thought their headstock looked the coolest. It went in the neck pocket with minimal adjustment. Both took about three months from order to delivery.
When you only have one pickup, you kind of have to choose wisely. After a bit of agonizing, I finally decided on a Lace Matt Pike Signature “Dragonauts” pickup. I figured if it’s good enough for Matt, it should work for me. It sounds amazing and articulate enough through an ungodly amount of fuzz.
Since this is a Jazzmaster, it seemed natural to go with a Mastery bridge and tremolo. I’m not normally a big wiggle-stick guy, but it’s fun to give things a bit of warbly flavor every now and then. It’s probably not the first choice for most metal players, and it initially felt a little strange palm-muting, but it works for me. It stays in tune, and it’s way less fiddly than a Floyd. Mastery makes that awesome space-age-looking tremolo arm tip, too, which I think really sets this thing off.
Reader and guitar designer Erik Sheppard.
“I think the cool kids use even heavier strings, but these work fine, and I stopped being cool a long time ago anyway.”
I added some standard pots and knobs and Schaller strap locks, and it was done. I’ve got Ernie Ball Not Even Slinky .012–.056 strings on there (since the guitar lives in C standard), which are just fat enough to not be floppy, without feeling like telephone lines. I think the cool kids use even heavier strings, but these work fine, and I stopped being cool a long time ago anyway.
The whole thing cost about 2,300 bucks, including a few hundred for some help from the folks at Strait Music here in Austin, who are always amazing. I was a bit paranoid about drilling into the body and potentially screwing up the finish, so I enlisted the pros.
My only complaint is that this thing is an absolute beast, at about 11 pounds, which is a lot heavier than I’d prefer, but a wide Levy’s strap makes it a bit easier to shoulder. It looks, sounds, and plays exactly as I wanted it to, so I’m quite happy with how it turned out.This reader’s doubleneck guitar sports one rather unusual feature—a fretless neck.
I’m always looking for things that push my guitar playing in new directions and challenge me, whether it’s new music, rediscovering old music, or new gear. Though I’ve played fretless bass for years, I’ve always wanted a fretless guitar. Yet, the fear of being on stage without the safety net of a fretted guitar, coupled with the inspiration of Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal, pointed me towards a doubleneck. I put this guitar together with Warmoth parts, since a comparable Kiesel headless doubleneck was out of my price range.
I started with an alder body, finished in cinder red gloss by Warmoth. The fretless neck has maple fret lines on a black ebony fretboard, on a roasted maple neck. The fretted neck has a scalloped ebony fretboard (a nod to Yngwie) on a roasted maple neck. The ebony peghead veneers came out really nice. I didn’t have the courage to do a lineless fretboard on the fretless side, though it would have made the fretless side more obvious. Most people roll their eyes when they think there are just two fretted necks.
The pickups are Seymour Duncan Hot Rails in the neck, and Jupiter Rails in the bridge. In between the necks, there’s a 6-way Free-Way Switch. It operates like a 3-way toggle, but in the up position, it selects the fretless side, and the down position selects the fretted side. Despite the electronics separation, I still need fret wraps, because the sympathetic vibrating of each neck can be heard through the other neck’s pickups. They’re easy enough to slide on and off.
This guitar also has LSR roller nuts. Combined with the Gotoh locking tuners, tuning is pretty solid. I love the LSR nut, though you gotta be careful when changing strings because the little ball bearings fall out if you’re not careful.
“Most people roll their eyes when they think there are just two fretted necks.”
The fretless side is strung with D’Addario flats. I prefer .011s, though I know some fretless users go for heavier gauges. I’m considering having the fretless board epoxied, though the flatwounds don’t really chew up the fretboard. Anyway, I can always just replace the neck in the future if it gets chewed up. The fretted side has .009s, and I don’t have a problem with pushing them out of tune on the scalloped board.
One thing I learned, while I ordered the vintage spacing hardtail on the fretless side, is that it’s virtually impossible to find vintage-spacing bridges in black. But I managed to cobble together some bridges to make it work.
Lastly, I had a battery cavity installed in the back, though I knew that I wouldn’t use active electronics. I figured it would lighten this heavy guitar, even if just by a few ounces. Still, it “only” weighs 13 pounds.
I’m really surprised that various techniques work well on the fretless side—conventional picking, sweeps, and tapping. I had initially wanted a sustainer in the neck position of the fretless side, but that would have complicated the wiring beyond my meager abilities. Fortunately, I don’t need it. Sustain is not too much of a problem—maybe more so on the higher frets of the plain strings, but that’s nothing that some tremolo picking can’t solve. Chords are a different story, though. Hard to intonate any chords other than simple fifths. But that’s what the fretted guitar is for!
As a member of Bob Marley and the Wailers, he was one of reggae’s original creators.
Bass is about connection—within the music, among the players, and between the musicians and the listener. Even if you can only hear a song’s bass line, say, in a noisy, crowded room, or through an adjoining wall, you might be able to recognize the song—and conjure up all the memories and emotions of how that song speaks to you. Simply through bass. In the musical conversation between rhythm and harmony, bass bridges the gap, gluing everything together. And chances are, as the bass player in your band, you’re not only providing that musical groove glue, but you may also be holding the band together practically and interpersonally. And the whole time, you’re making everyone and everything feel and sound good.
It’s hard to think of any player who embodied this idea of bass as connection more than Aston “Family Man” Barrett. Though (like most bass players) he’s not exactly a household name, he truly should be: As the long-time bassist, arranger, and coproducer of Bob Marley and the Wailers, his musical innovations and memorable lines are exceedingly familiar to anyone who has ever heard reggae music. “Fams,” as he was known, died in February of this year at 77, leaving a long legacy of reggae mastery.
Indeed, as Family Man was one of reggae’s original creators, he helped birth the bass-heavy Jamaican genre into existence from its stylistic precursors, ska and rocksteady. Together with his younger brother, drummer Carlton “Carly” Barrett, Fams created and established much of the hypnotic pulse and infectious vibe that characterizes reggae rhythms. Family Man’s feel was firm yet relaxed, his tone deep, dark, and plush. It was with these bottom-heavy colors, coaxed from a Höfner “Beatle” bass in his early years, then from his flatwound-strung Fender Jazz bass, that Aston Barrett crafted snaky, syncopated hooks and short melodic phrases that bolstered the vocal melodies while playing against the bouncing backbeats of the rhythm guitar and organ.
Before building his first bass from plywood and a length of 2“x4”, Barrett’s first musical love was singing along to American soul artists on Jamaican radio. “When I’m playing the bass, it’s like I’m singing,” Fams told music journalist Bill Murphy in a 2007 Bass Player magazine interview. “I compose a melodic line and see myself like I’m singing baritone.” You can hear his vocal-like bass stylings in songs like “Is This Love” and “Waiting in Vain.” These and many other Barrett bass lines serve as countermelodies, animated motifs that play against each song’s main vocal melody. Family Man’s parts are often easy to sing along to, so it’s easy to imagine Fams singing them in his head.
“Fams not only kept that intragroup connection strong, but he also went beyond the bass, creating and composing many of the intricate, interconnecting parts you can hear in any Bob Marley and the Wailers recording.”
The Barrett brothers played in several early reggae bands before joining the Wailers full-time in 1972, including famed producer Lee “Scratch” Perry’s house band, the Upsetters. In 1969, when the original Upsetters lineup couldn’t make a U.K. tour due to a scheduling conflict, Aston and Carlton’s band the Hippy Boys became the new Upsetters. In this group, they backed a pantheon of early reggae artists, including the Wailers, a vocal trio with Marley, Peter Tosh, and Bunny Wailer. The Upsetters eventually became the core of the Wailers’ rhythm section. Tosh and Bunny Wailer left the band in 1974.
It was years before, though, well before he had children (and he had a lot of children) that Aston Barrett began calling himself “Family Man.” This reflected how he saw it as his role to keep the band together. As the Wailers’ bandleader, arranger, and co-producer, Fams not only kept that intragroup connection strong, but he also went beyond the bass, creating and composing many of the intricate, interconnecting parts you can hear in any Bob Marley and the Wailers recording. But his primary musical connection was with his brother, Carly. Among other reggae conventions, the Barrett brothers pioneered the “one drop” rhythmic style, in which the bass and drums skip the downbeat—dropping the one—as you can hear in the bass and drum parts of songs like “Trenchtown Rock” and “One Drop.”
I met Family Man at the photo shoot for that 2007 Bass Player cover story, and again in 2012 when Phil Chen and I interviewed him onstage during the weekend he received his Bass Player Lifetime Achievement Award. During the photo shoot, we also shot a short video interview, which you can find on YouTube, where he demonstrates the “One Drop” bass line, plucking with his thumb between the end of the neck and the neck pickup. Even barely amplified, you can feel the depth that comes from Family Man’s bass approach. In the Marley years, that huge “earth sound” came from two Acoustic 18" speaker cabinets and two 4x15 cabinets. “You need them that big to get that sound,” Barrett told Murphy, “because reggae music is the heartbeat of the people. It’s the universal language what carry that heavy message of roots, culture, and reality. So the bass have to be heavy and the drums have to be steady.”Aston "Family Man" Barrett, Bob Marley & the Wailers bassist - 2007 Bass Player mag. interview 1/2
Here's the first part of Bill Leigh’s 2007 interview with Bob Marley & the Wailers' bassist Aston "Family Man" Barrett.
When you’ve built your entire life around guitars, our columnist says, it’s shockingly easy to connect their history with just about anything—including dogs.
I was talking to my wife the other day about selling guitars. My daughter wants a car, so I’ve been unloading a few nice electrics on fellow collectors with the hope that I can get my girl something safe to drive. My wife and daughter were joking about how much guitars are a part of our lives, and how I can connect anything to guitars, design, and music.
Seriously, you can present me with just about any topic and I can probably wrap some guitar lore around it. My wife asked if I had ever connected guitars and animals, and I got to thinking about it. Maybe I had? But, just to show her I can tell a tale, this month I’ll be writing about our dogs and “mutt” guitars!
So, back in 2015, I was searching a pet-finder website, looking to add a dog to our family. The kids wanted a dog, and even my wife, who has awful allergies, accepted the fact that we all had a lot of love to give to a pet. I was searching adoption agencies, primarily looking for a dog that didn’t shed, when I happed upon the cutest little puppy! His name was Bucky, and the story went that he and his littermates were born in a barn in Ohio. The mom had passed away shortly after giving birth, so the litter was being rescued by a local adoption group. I started to fill out the forms and do all the paperwork to get little Bucky, but then I saw he also had a brother that hadn’t been adopted! So along with Bucky came his brother Brody, and that spring, we welcomed two of the sweetest little boys into the family.
These two were trouble from the get-go, but we loved them, and I have to say that the year we got them was one of the best years of my life. The boys looked pretty similar, each having a light tan color; almost vanilla. But no one could figure out what breeds they were. Like, they were total mutts! Some terrier, some poodle, some hound? We heard it all. In the end, it really didn’t matter, because these mutts were ours, and we were gonna love them, no matter what.
Okay, so back to guitar land. This topic got me thinking about “mutt” guitars. See, back in the day, a lot of guitar factories all over the world would try to use up parts. The CBS Fender era was a notorious time for strange designs that were meant to use up stock. The Japanese makers did the same, with similar results, but a little more extreme. All the time, I see guitars that had left a factory with a mixup of parts, and sometimes I’ll see something that I’ve never seen before. These “mutts” can perplex and bewilder collectors because it seems like some of these were one-offs.
“The CBS Fender era was a notorious time for strange designs that were meant to use up stock.”
Take, for instance, the mutt I’m presenting here. The body and neck are from the late-’60s Valco run of guitars, known as Lexingtons. I’ve written about Lexington guitars before and how much I like them, but this guitar is a total weirdo. Why? Because the pickups, electronics, and tremolo are all Japanese sourced. Which begs the question, why are we seeing a factory stock guitar with a mix of such disjointed parts? Well, these were the mutts!
The Valco company, located in Chicago, was in the final years of production, and started sourcing out bodies and necks to Japan. In other words, those parts were made in Japan, shipped to the U.S., and Valco would then put on their U.S. parts and pickups. But this strange bird was finished off in Japan—which is where I found this guitar—using a super old tremolo, the odd switches, rando pickups, and a really basic bridge that didn’t allow for any intonation. How did it sound? Meh. How did it play? Meh. It was simply a hastily made guitar, using up leftover parts.
Mutt guitars are a real mixed bag. Some are okay, some are amazing, and some are real stinkers. But there is some fun in finding these rarities. If you have the time, the search is the greatest thrill, just like finding two good dogs. This one is for my mutts, Bucky and Brody!
For this month’s question, Breaking Benjamin guitarist Keith Wallen chimes in with reader Benoit Champagne and PG staff on where they’d like to see themselves grow in their musical pursuits.
Question: What’s one area you’d like to improve on in your music?
Guest Picker - Keith Wallen
A: I think there is always room for improvement for myself musically. The moment you stop trying to improve or stop caring about ways to innovate your skills or approach, you’ve kind of given up or resolved yourself to the level you’re at, even if it’s unconsciously. Playing guitar is such an amazing form of expression, but it can go hand in hand with writing, so I think songwriting is what I’d most like to improve upon. Finding that perfect combination of chords, melody, and lyrics is not easy, but I think all of us songwriters strive to come as close as we can. I know I do!
Current obsession: My newest obsession is my new signature ESP Custom Shop guitar that I got this fall. It is, for all intents and purposes, my “weapon” to go into battle with for all my solo/non-Breaking Benjamin shows. Shout out to Tony Rauser at ESP for helping me to create my ultimate dream guitar! It’s basically a souped-up E-II M-I, which is another ESP guitar that I’ve owned for almost five years now and absolutely love. I now have my own version of my favorite guitar, complete with Seymour Duncan Jeff Beck pickups, a unique crow design, a matte finish, and my logo set for the inlays.
Reader of the Month - Benoit Champagne
A: I’ve been working on practicing scales and modes at 40 bpm and lower. 60 bpm and higher is a lot easier. If you start very slow and gradually speed up, that’s where I see a lot of improvements and ease reflected in my playing—no matter the fingering pattern or speed involved.
Current obsession: Expanding on two-handed tapping. That’s something I have put aside for many years, but am currently getting back into with the scales and chord knowledge that I’ve acquired over the years. I find that this allows me to expand on my fretboard mapping knowledge with a different point of view.
Editorial Director - Ted Drozdowski
A: I’d like to establish a better, more disciplined practice routine, for chasing inspiration. When I was touring, everything flowed like water; now it’s more like pancake batter.
Current obsession: In almost every spare minute of the past two years, I’ve been working on a feature-length film called The River: A Songwriter’s Stories of the South with my cosmic roots band, Coyote Motel. Now, it’s screening at film festivals, winning laurels, and the soundtrack is coming out. I am obsessed with getting this trippy film into the world and having as many people experience it as possible.
Associate Editor - Jason Shadrick
A: It’s always a struggle to turn the microscope inward on your own playing. Plus, the target you are aiming for is always moving. Currently, I want to not focus so much on the craft of guitar playing, but more the art. A friend recently told me that I should look for the vulnerability in my playing—and I don’t disagree.
Current obsession: I’m binging on the original Broadway cast recording of School of Rock. My daughter recently was cast in a production, and it has become her gateway into the world of loud guitars. Next stop: AC/DC.