
Leni Stern is prepped to cut a track with her ngoni as her trusty Custom Shop Strat waits its turn. The guitar's weathering is the result of finish damage by mosquito spray she used while playing festivals in India and Africa.
Two combos are slimmed down for air travel, but beefy enough for a global musical adventurer. And for the ngoni.
Everybody knows it's easy to get a clean, full tone from a Fender Blues Junior and a Strat, but what about a ngoni? That's the 6-stringed Malian instrument that guitarist and singer Leni Stern has adopted as her third core voice. With three plucked and three resonating strings, and a wood, calabash, and animal-skin construction, it seems like a potential nightmare to amplify. But … with the right pickup and her little workhorse combo, she's got it dialed in both live and on her new album Dance—bright and punchy, with just the right touch of air, and a propulsive, fat snap that reveals the ngoni's role in inspiring the banjo while sounding, quite rightfully, from an older, nearly timeless place.
Here's Stern's road-warrior Blues Junior, which has a neodymium Jensen Tornado replacement speaker.
The key, says Stern, was installing a pickup by Carlos Juan, who designed the magnetic wonders that Pat Metheny uses to amplify his Linda Manzer-built 42-string Pikasso. It was given to her by classical guitarist Derek Gripper, and once it replaced the contact pickup she'd been using, the ngoni truly came to electrified life. (See this story online to watch her play the ngoni onstage.)
"On tours, I like to bring my own amp, so I had to reduce the weight of the Blues Junior with a flight case so they would come in at 50 pounds exactly."
"It sounds really well-balanced and has very low feedback, with my Blues Junior, Super Champ, or Matchless," Stern says, bringing up the trio of 15-watt amps that are the stars of this month's column. Stern has had some changes made to all of them—adding a neodymium speaker to the Junior, her most frequent traveling companion, and chop-shopping the Matchless Lightning 15 so its head is removable, significantly reducing the stock weight. The Fender Super Champ's original 10" speaker has been replaced with a 12"—an easy and common mod that gives the little bugger a significantly heftier voice.
While it looks like a first-generation Matchless Lightning 15, the head and cab of Stern's amp have been modded so the head can be lifted out and used independently.
Big, often pastel tones—mostly from Teles and Strats (a '59 hardtail Stratocaster is one of her most-prized guitars)—are among Stern's signatures. And while the Super Champ mostly stays home, the Junior and Lightning do globe trot—just like her music, which is a highly evolved mix of ethnically rooted sounds that Stern traces back to the eclectic internationalist musical tastes of her father and the pancultural sensibility she experienced growing up in Germany, which she then fanned to conflagrance via her own miles-deep jones for learning and exploring. West African music is a particular passion and provides much of Dance's backbone.
Leni Stern Trio at Iridium - 11/2012 - Like a Thief
West—Africa that is—meets west as Leni Stern plays her ngoni through one of the faithful Fender Blues Juniors she's carried to gigs around the world for the past 13 years. In this 2012 performance at Manhattan's Iridium, she's playing "Like a Thief," from 2011's Sabani, one of her series of albums blending the traditional sounds of Senegal and Mali with jazz and pop.
"On tours, I like to bring my own amp, so I had to reduce the weight of the Blues Junior with a flight case so they would come in at 50 pounds exactly," she explains. The weight of the Junior is now 23 pounds, verses its out-of-the-factory 31. For the Matchless, it wasn't as simple as a speaker replacement. The company seamlessly modded the 1x12 combo so the head can be nestled in the cab or travel separately. Both are run through a pedalboard, and while the Matchless has no reverb and requires a stompbox, the Junior has the company's classic spring reverb. The tube array is three 12AX7s for the Junior's preamp stage and two EL84 power tubes, with 3-band EQ plus master and volume dials, and a fat-boost switch she often uses. Her favorite source of overdrive, though, is a Free the Tone Heat Blaster, which lends the kind of smooth, creamy power-tone that she shares with her husband, Mike Stern. (Watching them perform together is as much fun as seeing a pair of otters at play.) The Matchless Lightning, by the way, also has three 12AX7s, one EL84 power tube, and volume and master dials with 2-band EQ.
And here's the (mostly) homebody: a Fender Super Champ with a 12" Celestion TN120.
It becomes obvious in conversation that the Junior is her favorite. She speaks of it as warmly as the amp itself speaks. "I've had three over the past 13 years, because it has a circuit board and those get damaged in all the travel, which doesn't happen with point-to-point-wired amps like the Matchless," she notes. "But the Junior is very versatile, with tones that have the lightness and sweetness of a Princeton, but they're stronger and louder. I use the overdrive function a lot. It gets me a little into Boogie territory."
To misquote John Lennon, happiness is a warm tone, but Stern does have one regret regarding amps. "I'm still a little mad at myself for not buying a Dumble 25 years ago when Robben Ford told me I should," she says. "At the time, they were just becoming popular, but a Blues Junior only cost $300 or something like that. I thought paying $3,000 for an amp was ridiculous." She laughs.
Leni Stern: Kono (Bird)
Stern's new album, Dance, is a lovely and gentle fusion of her sprawling influences that amounts to a genre unto itself. Here, Stern and her band, keyboardist Leo Genovese, bassist Mamadou Ba, and percussionist Alioune Faye, showcase the delicate melody and rolling groove of "Kono."
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We chat with Molly about Sister Rosetta’s “immediately impressive” playing, which blends jazz, gospel, chromaticism, and blues into an early rock ‘n’ roll style that was not only way ahead of its time but was also truly rockin’.
In the early ’60s, some of the British guitarists who would shape the direction of our instrument for decades to come all found themselves at a concert by Sister Rosetta Tharpe. What they heard from Tharpe and what made her performances so special—her sound, her energy—must have resonated. Back at home in the U.S., she was a captivating presence, wowing audiences going back to her early days in church through performing the first stadium rock ‘n’ roll concert—which was also one of her weddings—and beyond. Her guitar playing was incendiary, energetic, and a force to be reckoned with.
On this episode of 100 Guitarists, we’re joined by guitarist Molly Miller, who in addition to being a fantastic guitarist, educator, bandleader, and performing with Jason Mraz, is a bit of a Sister Rosetta scholar. We chat with Molly about Sister Rosetta’s “immediately impressive” playing, which blends jazz, gospel, chromaticism, and blues into an early rock ‘n’ roll style that was not only way ahead of its time but was also truly rockin’.
Featuring vintage tremolos, modern slicer effects, and stereo auto-panners, the update includes clever Rate and Tempo controls for seamless syncing and morphing.
Today Kemper announces the immediate availability PROFILER OS 12.0 including the highly anticipated collection of advanced Tremolo and Slicer FX for the entire range of KEMPER PROFILER guitar amps.
The Collection features three vintage tremolos, two modern slicer effects, and two stereo auto-panners, that have been derived from the slicer effects. They all feature a clever Rate and Tempo control system, that allows for syncing the tremolo to the song tempo, retriggering the timing by simply hitting the TAP switch, and changing or morphing the tremolo rate to different note values,
The new Advanced Tremolo Modules in Detail
- The Tube Bias Tremolo is the familiar Tremolo in the Kemper Profilers. Formally named "Tremolo“ and available in the PROFILERs since day one, it is a reproduction of the famous Fender Amp tremolos from the 50‘s. Placed in front of the amp it beautifully interacts with the amp distortion.
- The Photocell Tremolo dates back to the 60‘s and features a steeper pulse slope, and its width varies with the intensity.
- The Harmonic Tremolo also dates back to the 60‘s and was introduced by Fender. The low and high frequencies alternate with the tremolo rate.
- The Pulse Slicer is a modern slizer or stutter effect that will continuously transition from the smoothest sine wave to the sharpest square wave, using the "Edge“ parameter. The "Skew“ parameter changes the timing of the high level versus the low level, sometimes also called pulse width or duty cycle.
- The Saw Slicer creates a ramp like a saw wave. The saw wave has a falling ramp when "Edge“ is at full position, and a rising edge at zero position. Towards the middle position a rising and falling ramp are forming a triangle wave. The „Skew“ parameter changes the slope of the rising and falling ramp from a linear trajectory to a more convex or concave shape.
- The Pulse Autopanner and the Saw Autopanner are derivates from their respective Slicers, they spread their signals in the stereo panorama. The "Stereo“-control parameter is included in many effects of the PROFILER. Here, it introduces a novel "super-stereo" effect that lets the Autopanner send the signal well outside the regular stereo image. This effect works best if you are well positioned in the correct stereo triangle of your speakers. When you move the “Stereo” soft knob beyond the +/-100% setting, the super-stereo effect comes into place, reaching its maximum impact at +/-200%.
- A single press on the TAP button at the beginning of the bar will bring the rhythmic modulation effects, such as Tremolo or Slicer, back into sync with the music without changing the tempo. The sync will happen smoothly and almost unnoticeable, which is a unique feature. Of course, tapping the tempo is possible as well.
- Modulation Rate - The “Rate” control available in many modulation effects is based on a special philosophy that allows continuous control over the speed of the modulation and continuous Morphing, even when linked to the current tempo via the To Tempo option. The fine Rate resolution shines when seamlessly morphing from, e.g., 1/8 notes to 1/16 notes or triplets without a glitch and without losing the timing of the music.
PG's demo master quickly (and easily) drops in an H-S-S setup into his 1994 40th Anniversary Stratocaster that needed help. Find out what happens when gets his first taste of active pickups.
EMG SL20 Steve Lukather Signature Pre-wired Pickguard with 3 Pickups - Black Pearl
SL20 Steve Lukather Pre-wired PG - Blk PearlBarry Little’s onstage rig.
How you want to sound and what makes you happy are both highly subjective. When it comes to packing and playing gear for shows, let those considerations be your guide.
I was recently corresponding with Barry Little, aPG reader from Indiana, Pennsylvania, about “the One”—that special guitar that lets us play, and even feel, better when it’s in our hands. We got talking about the gear we bring to gigs, and Barry sent me the photo that appears with this column.
“I’m mostly old school and take quite the amp rig, and usually two or three Strats or ‘super strats,’ plus some Teles,” he wrote. “Some are in different tunings.” Barry also has a rack, built with famed guitar-rig designer Bob Bradshaw’s help, that he says holds a Bad Cat preamp bearing serial number one. For his ’70s/’80s rock outfit and his country band, this covers the waterfront.
I love Barry’s rig; it looks awesome! So … why do I feel guilty about the substantial amount of gear I take to gigs where my five-piece band will be playing a concert-length set? Onstage, my setup looks fantastic—at least to me. It’s the gear I’ve always wanted. But packed inside cases and ready to load into the Honda Odyssey with a rooftop carrier that all five of us and our instruments travel in for away dates … it seems excessive. Currently, I take three guitars: my customized reissue Fender Esquire “Dollycaster,” my Zuzu one-off Green Monster, and a Supro Conquistador, plus a 1-string electric diddley bow made from a crawfish-boiling pot. They start every show in open G octave (D–G–D–G–D–G), open D, standard tuning, and A, respectively. There’s also a Sony GLXD6+ wireless, and a pedalboard with 13 effects stomps, a tuner, and two power boxes, along with a Brown Box. That board is the launchpad for the stereo signal that runs into two Carr 1x12 combos: a Vincent and a Telstar. In addition, there’s a big black bag with spare cables, fuses, capos, strings, extension cords, microphones, straps, duct tape, and just about anything else you might need. After all that, miraculously, there is also room for my bandmates–another guitarist, bass, drums, and theremin—and their gear, plus light luggage.
I admit that’s a lot, but it used to be more—at least by the pound. In the late ’90s and early 2000s, I often played through two Marshall 4x12s with a Mesa/Boogie Duel Rectifier Trem-O-Verb on one and a ’72 Marshall Super Lead atop the other. And before that, it was the Marshall with a 4x12 plus a ’66 Fender Twin Reverb. I kept a waist back-support belt in the van, but spent a decent chunk of that era living with regular back pain.
“I admit that’s a lot, but it used to be more—at least by the pound.”
Where am I going with this? Besides a desire for you to absolve me of my guilt, I feel like all of this gear is … um … necessary? It’s the recipe for the sound I want to hear, for the versatility of the material, and for me to play from my happiest place—onstage in the middle of a glorious stereo field of my own making. It’s not really about gear and it’s not about somebody else’s definition of practicality. It’s about joy. Ideally, you should be able to bring whatever gives you joy to a gig. Period.
Sure, naysayers will yap that after a guitar, a cable, and an amp, nothing else is necessary. And on a certain misguided, intolerant level, they are right. We can all play a show with just the basics, but I, for one, don’t want to—unless maybe it’s a solo gig. Neither did Jimi Hendrix. There is a universe of tones out there waiting to be discovered and explored. There are improvisational paths that only a pedalboard can suggest. (Of course, if you’re playing a small stage, traveling in too tight quarters, or claiming turf that impinges on bandmates, those considerations apply. “Be kind” is a good rule of thumb for life, including band life.)
Remember, the naysayers are not in your bones, and onlyyour bones know what you need and want. Don’t let the voices—even in your own head—nag you. (I, too, must take this advice to heart.) Bring whatever you want to bring to gigs, as long as you can get it there. Do it guiltlessly. Have fun. And listen to your bones.