SUSTO's Justin Osborne joins Premier Guitar editors and our reader of the month in discussing oddball guitars and current musical obsessions.
Question: What's the weirdest-shaped guitar you own and how did you acquire it?
Justin Osborne – SUSTO
Photo by Dries Vandenberg
A: The weirdest-shaped guitar I own is by far my '80s Kramer Voyager. I never play it live, but it was actually one of the first guitars I ever bought way back in my early teens. I was at an antique shop with my mom and the guitar was there for only $75. I borrowed the money from my parents to buy it and had a lot of fun with it, mostly just playing in my room. My friend has been borrowing it indefinitely, but I still count it as a part of my guitar collection and will always remember it as my first electric guitar.
Current obsession:
My current musical obsession is Strand of Oaks' new album In Heaven. I've been a fan for a while now, and just love how Tim Showalter creates such a specific sonic landscape on his albums. This new one is a banger!
Strand of Oaks - Galacticana (Official Acoustic Video)
Strand of Oaks - Galacticana (Official Acoustic Video)Stream / Purchase: https://orcd.co/inheavenFollow Strand of Oaks:Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/...Sam Crowley – Reader of the Month
A: My Telecasket, which I built. White Zombie is one of my favorite bands of all time and has been since high school. I loved Sean Yseult's coffin basses from the moment I saw them and always thought if I could have a custom guitar, it would be a coffin. Fast forward 25+ years, as I was playing in my horror-rock band, the Electric Dead, it was time to finally do it. My father, who is a cabinet maker, and I built it together over the course of a few weeks.
Telecasket
The string-through body is a big slab of pine, and the binding/center stripe are walnut. My favorite guitarist is Billy Gibbons, so I had to put a Pearly Gates in there. His style also influenced the choice of no neck pickup and just a volume knob. Super simple. This being our first guitar project, we didn't want to tackle the neck, so I ordered that from Solo Music here in Ontario. I replaced the nut on that with a TUSQ nut and gave it a satin finish. The guitar is amazingly resonant, sounds absolutely huge, and the audience loves it!
Current obsession:
Photo by Blain Clausen
Always Billy Gibbons. To me, he's just the coolest guitar player ever!
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The ZZ Top legend on what makes his “Pearly Gates” Les Paul so special, why he recently had his hands x-rayed, and the “slithering” slide guitarist whose wor...Shawn Hammond – Chief Content Officer
A: Unfortunately, I can't find a pic of the cherry-finished Gibson '67 Flying V reissue I had to sell in a pinch a decade and a half ago, but I really miss it—it had neato-sounding, splittable Duncan Seth Lover pickups.
The weirdest profiles in my collection now would be my old Schecter Ultra III (which has a TV Jones Magna'Tron in the bridge position) or my Mosrite-inspired Eastwood Sidejack Baritone DLX (with Curtis Novak JM-WR pickups).
Current obsession:
Of late, I've really been lusting after a DynaSonic-outfitted Gretsch Jet.
Ted Drozdowski – Senior Editor
Photo by John Thomas Collins
A: If you're an old Delta blues guitarist, you might have started on a 1-string like my diddley bow (below). It's got slices of pipe for the bridge and nut, an old banjo tuner, a galvanized-pot body with a genuine plywood top, and an old tobacco barn stave for the neck.
It was a gift from my friend Mike Mitchell, an artist in East Nashville, and I put in a Mexico-made Tele pickup, so it sounds nasty. It's a big hit at shows and sounds super-gnarly through a Marshall.
Current obsession:
Maybe a new combo for my stereo amp setup, or a damn cool small head? And to keep on keepin' on.
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Reverend Vernon Reid Totem Series Electric Guitar - Shaman
Silos features six presets, tap tempo, one full second of delay time, and three voices—two of which are styled after bucket-brigade and tape-delay sounds. In the $150 price category, it’s not unusual for a digital delay to leave some number of those functions out. And spending the same money on a true-analog alternative usually means warm, enveloping sounds but limited functionality and delay time. Silos, improbably perhaps, offers a very elegant solution to this can’t-have-it-all dilemma in a U.S.-made effect.
A More Complete Cobbling Together
Silos’ utility is bolstered by a very unintimidating control set, which is streamlined and approachable. Three of those controls are dedicated to the same mix, time, and repeats controls you see on any delay. But saving a preset to one of the six spots on the rotary preset dial is as easy as holding the green/red illuminated button just below the mix and preset knobs. And you certainly won’t get lost in the weeds if you move to the 3-position toggle, which switches between a clear “digital” voice, darker “analog” voice, and a “tape” voice which is darker still.
“The three voices offer discernibly different response to gain devices.”
One might suspect that a tone control for the repeats offers similar functionality as the voice toggle switch. But while it’s true that the most obvious audible differences between digital, BBD, and tape delays are apparent in the relative fidelity and darkness of their echoes, the Silos’ three voices behave differently in ways that are more complex than lighter or duskier tonality. For instance, the digital voice will never exhibit runaway oscillation, even at maximum mix and repeat settings. Instead, repeats fade out after about six seconds (at the fastest time settings) or create sleepy layers of slow-decaying repeats that enhance detail in complex, sprawling, loop-like melodic phrases. The analog voice and tape voice, on the other hand, will happily feed back to psychotic extremes. Both also offer satisfying sensitivity to real-time, on-the-fly adjustments. For example, I was tickled with how I could generate Apocalypse Now helicopter-chop effects and fade them in and out of prominence as if they were approaching or receding in proximity—an effect made easier still if you assign an expression pedal to the mix control. This kind of interactivity is what makes analog machines like the Echoplex, Space Echo, and Memory Man transcend mere delay status, and the sensitivity and just-right resistance make the process of manipulating repeats endlessly engaging.
Doesn't Flinch at Filth
EarthQuaker makes a point of highlighting the Silos’ affinity for dirty and distorted sounds. I did not notice that it behaved light-years better than other delays in this regard. But the three voices most definitely offer discernibly different responses to gain devices. The super-clear first repeat in the digital mode lends clarity and melodic focus, even to hectic, unpredictable, fractured fuzzes. The analog voice, which EQD says is inspired by the tone makeup of a 1980s-vintage, Japan-made KMD bucket brigade echo, handles fuzz forgivingly inasmuch as its repeats fade warmly and evenly, but the strong midrange also keeps many overtones present as the echoes fade. The tape voice, which uses aMaestro Echoplex as its sonic inspiration, is distinctly dirtier and creates more nebulous undercurrents in the repeats. If you want to retain clarity in more melodic settings, it will create a warm glow around repeats at conservative levels. Push it, and it will summon thick, sometimes droning haze that makes a great backdrop for slower, simpler, and hooky psychedelic riffs.
In clean applications, this decay and tone profile lend the tape setting a spooky, foggy aura that suggests the cold vastness of outer space. The analog voice often displays an authentic BBD clickiness in clean repeats that’s sweet for underscoring rhythmic patterns, while the digital voice’s pronounced regularity adds a clockwork quality that supports more up-tempo, driving, electronic rhythms.
The Verdict
Silos’ combination of features seems like a very obvious and appealing one. But bringing it all together at just less than 150 bucks represents a smart, adept threading of the cost/feature needle.
EarthQuaker Devices Silos Multi-generational Time Reflection Delay Pedal
