
Music is a lifelong pursuit, and all of us who love guitars and the sounds they make are in it together.
When you pick up an issue of Premier Guitar, you’re chasing music. And I’ll bet that’s something you and I have been doing, whenever we can, our entire lives. Driven by love, curiosity, and the excitement of discovery, we pursue the sounds that thrill us or might thrill us, and the more we learn or find, the brighter the flame grows.
For me, the first sparks happened in my parents’ kitchen, where my mother, Rose, listened to WEXT, a country station broadcasting from New Britain, Connecticut. There, I learned that music takes you places, like Marty Robbins’ “El Paso,” and introduces you to the vastly different lives of others, via songs like Johnny Cash’s“The Ballad of Ira Hayes.” TV also became a path of exploration. I was only 6, but I remember seeing—and hearing—the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show and not exactly understanding (all that screaming!), but grasping that rock ’n’ roll was something I should look into. Soon, Shindig! and Hullabaloo introduced me to the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds, Herman’s Hermits, and the giant whose birthday I share, Howlin’ Wolf. (June 10 … feel free to send cards!) The Johnny Cash Show spotlighted Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, and Derek and the Dominos. And The Midnight Special turned me on to virtually every major rock and R&B artist of the early ’70s, and sent me down a lifelong rabbit hole of blues and soul when Ray Charles and Ike & Tina Turner appeared. My first allowances—50 cents and eventually $2 a week—were spent on music. (First album: The Sound of Johnny Cash, for $2 at Woolworth’s, and I still own it. It features my first guitar hero: Luther Perkins.)
Shortly, I discovered there was such a thing as music journalism, and I fell for the writing of Robert Palmer and Lester Bangs, and found a magazine called Musician, where I would eventually make my bones as an editor. Each of these discoveries enflamed the chase, and by the time I got to college, I spent part of nearly every weekend combing new and used record shops from New York City to Hartford. I was also able to get to Manhattan easily from school in Bridgeport, to experience the punk revolution. And so it went, and still goes—that unquenchable pursuit of musical discovery.
Somewhere along the line, a guitar fell into my hands, and a new dimension slowly and painstakingly (I am far from a natural) developed—where I could be part of that great musical continuum in a deeper way, and where, eventually, I learned the wordless language of musicians. It’s a rich tongue that conveys so much emotional information without as much as a single vowel. The dialog of sound. It is amazing, powerful, profound, and unlike anything else. If there is real magic, it is in listening to and playing music.
That magic has taken me many places. I went from seeing bands at CBGB to playing its stage many times. I played the New England clubs that I would sneak into when I was underage, catching G.E. Smith with the Scratch Band and other regional heroes. Eventually, the music I played took me across the country and to Europe, and to the stages of Bonnaroo and Memphis in May and France’s Cognac Blues Passions and Switzerland’s Blues Rules and so many roadhouses, dive bars, and breweries and barbecue joints you’d think I wouldn’t remember them all, but I do.
The point is this: Music is a lifelong adventure. We are in the chase together, no matter how different we may seem. The sound of it thrills us, and I’d be surprised—shocked, actually—if it hasn’t taken you somewhere. As guitar players, even those of us who’ve never left the couch have been transported. Tell me you’ve never played a song, plucked out a melody, or slammed out a favorite riff and suddenly found yourself completely removed from your surroundings—in a kind of reverie. And make no mistake, even if you’ve never played a gig and have a hard time forming an open-position B chord, you’re a guitar player. No one should be judging you (although I know it’s hard not to judge yourself).
It’s an honor and a privilege for us at PG to offer signposts for your chase—to introduce you to new players or reintroduce you to ones you love, to turn you on to new guitar music, to shed light on new gear and how to use it, and make using the gear you own even better. We do not take this lightly. And we love the chase every bit as much as you do.
- Tuning Up: Roy Buchanan and the Ghost of Jimi Hendrix ›
- Tuning Up: Damn Right, I’ve Got a Chip on My Shoulder! ›
- Tuning Up: Why Does Everyone Hate My Favorite Band? ›
ENGL, renowned for its high-performance amplifiers, proudly introduces the EP635 Fireball IR Pedal, a revolutionary 2-channel preamp pedal designed to deliver the legendary Fireball tone in a compact and feature-rich format.
The EP635 Fireball IR Pedal brings the raw power and precision of the ENGL Fireball amplifier into a pedalboard-friendly enclosure, offering unmatched flexibility and tonal control for guitarists of all styles. This cutting-edge pedal is equipped with advanced features, making it a must-have for players seeking high-gain perfection with modern digital convenience.
Key Features:
- Authentic Fireball Tone – Designed after the renowned ENGL Fireball amplifier, the EP635 delivers the unmistakable high-gain aggression and clarity that ENGL fans love.
- Two Independent Channels – Easily switch between two distinct channels, with each channel’s knob settings saved independently, allowing for seamless transitions between tones.
- Built-in Midboost Function – Enhance your tone with the integrated Midboost switch, perfect for cutting through the mix with extra punch.
- Advanced Noise Gate – Eliminate unwanted noise and maintain articulate clarity, even with high-gain settings.
- IR (Impulse Response) Loading via USB-C – Customize your sound with user-loadable IRs using the included software, bringing studio-quality cab simulations to your pedalboard.
- Headphone Output – Silent practice has never been easier, with a dedicated headphone output for direct monitoring.
- Premium Build and Intuitive Controls – Featuring a rugged chassis and responsive controls for Volume, Gain, Bass, Middle, Treble, and Presence, ensuring precise tonal shaping.
SPECS:
- Input 1/4” (6,35mm) Jack
- Output 1/4” (6,35mm) Jack
- Headphone Output 1/8”(3,5mm) Jack
- 9V DC / 300mA (center negativ) / power supply, sold separately
- USB C
The Gibson EH-185, introduced in 1939, was one of the company’s first electric guitars.
Before the Les Pauls and SGs, this aluminum-reinforced instrument was one of the famous brand’s first electric guitars.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of electric guitar in shaping American popular music over the last half-century. Its introduction was a revolution, changing the course of modern musical styles. Today, when we think of the guitars that started the revolution, we think of the Stratocaster and the Les Paul, guitars held against the body and fretted with the fingertips. But the real spark of this musical mutiny was the lap-steel guitar.
In the early 20th century, guitar music was moving out of the parlors of homes and into public spaces where folks could gather together and dance. Guitarists needed to project their sound far beyond where their wimpy little acoustic instruments could reach. Instrument manufacturers began experimenting with larger body sizes, metal construction, and resonators to increase volume.
Around this time, George Beauchamp began experimenting with electric guitar amplification. He settled on a design using two U-shaped magnets and a single coil of wire. Beauchamp was in business with Adolph Rickenbacker, and they decided to stick this new invention into a lap steel.
If we put on our 1930s glasses, this decision makes perfect sense. The most popular music at the time was a blend of Hawaiian and jazz styles made famous by virtuosos like Solomon “Sol” Hoʻopiʻi. Photos of Hoʻopiʻi with a metal-body resonator abound—one can imagine his relief at being handed an instrument that projected sound toward the audience via an amplifier, rather than back at his own head via resonator cones. Beauchamp and Rickenbacker were simply following the market.
As it turned out, the popularity of Hawaiian music gave way to swing, and electric lap steels didn’t exactly take the world by storm. But Beauchamp and Rickenbacker had proven the viability of this new technology, and other manufacturers followed suit. In 1937, Gibson created a pickup with magnets under the strings, rather than above like Beauchamp’s.
“When I plugged in the EH-185 I expected to hear something reminiscent of Charlie Christian’s smooth, clean tone. But what I got was meatier—closer to what I associate with P-90s: warm and midrange-y.”
The first page of Gibson’s “Electrical Instruments” section in the 1939 catalog features a glowing, full-page write-up of their top-of-the-line lap steel: the EH-185. “Everything about this new electric Hawaiian Guitar smacks of good showmanship,” effuses the copy. “It has smoothness, great sustaining power, and an easy flow of tone that builds up strongly and does not die out.”
Picking up the 1940 EH-185 at Fanny’s House of Music is about as close as one can get to traveling back in time to try a new one. It is just so clean, with barely any dings or even finish checking. Overall, this is a 9/10 piece, and it’s a joy to behold. Speaking of picking it up, the first thing you notice when you lift the EH-185 out of the case is its weight. This is a much heavier instrument than other similar-sized lap steels, owing to a length of thick metal between the body and the fretboard. The catalog calls it “Hyblum metal,” which may be a flowery trade name for an early aluminum alloy.
This 1940 EH-185 is heavier than other lap steels in its class, thanks to a length of metal between its fretboard and body.
Photo by Madison Thorn
There are numerous other fancy appointments on the EH-185 that Gibson didn’t offer on their lesser models. It’s made of highly figured maple, with diamond-shaped decorations on the back of the body and neck. The double binding is nearly a centimeter thick and gives the instrument a luxurious, expensive look.
Behind all these high-end attributes is a great-sounding guitar, thanks to that old pickup. It’s got three blades protruding through the bobbin for the unwound strings and one longer blade for the wound strings. When I plugged in the EH-185 I expected to hear something reminiscent of Charlie Christian’s smooth, clean tone. But what I got was meatier—closer to what I associate with P-90s: warm and midrange-y. It was just crying out for a little crunch and a bluesy touch. It’s kind of cool how such a pristine, high-end vintage instrument can be so well-suited for a sound that’s rough around the edges.
As far as electric guitars go, it doesn’t get much more vintage than this 1940 Gibson EH-185 Lap Steel. It reminds us of where the story of the electric guitar truly began. This EH-185 isn’t just a relic—it’s a testament to when the future of music was unfolding in real time. Plug it in, and you become part of the revolution.
Sources: Smithsonian, Vintage Guitar, Mozart Project, Gibson Pre-War, WIRED, Steel Guitar Forum, Vintaxe
J Mascis is well known for his legendary feats of volume.
J Mascis is well known for his legendary feats of volume. Just check out a photo of his rig to see an intimidating wall of amps pointed directly at the Dinosaur Jr. leader’s head. And though his loudness permeates all that he does and has helped cement his reputation, there’s a lot more to his playing.
On this episode of 100 Guitarists, we’re looking at each phase of the trio’s long career. How many pedals does J use to get his sound? What’s his best documented use of a flanger? How does his version of “Maggot Brain” (recorded with bassist Mike Watt) compare to Eddie Hazel’s? And were you as surprised as we were when Fender released a J Mascis signature Tele?
Editorial Director Ted Drozdowski’s current favorite noisemakers.
Premier Guitar’s edit staff shares their favorite fuzz units and how and when they use them.
Premier Guitar’s editors use their favorite fuzz pedals in countless ways. At any point during our waking hours, one of us could be turned on, plugged in, and fuzzed out—chasing a Sabbath riff, tracking menacing drone ambience, fire-branding a solo break with a psychedelic blast, or something else altogether more deranged. As any PGreader knows, there are nearly infinite paths to these destinations and almost as many fuzz boxes to travel with. Germanium, silicon, 2-transistor, 4-transistor, 6-transistor, octave, multimode, modern, and caveman-stupid: Almost all of these fuzz types are represented among our own faves, which are presented here as inspiration, and launch pads for your own rocket rides to the Fuzz-o-sphere.
Ted Drozdowski - Editorial Director
My favorite is my Burns Buzz, a stomp custom-made for me by Gary Kibler of Big Knob Pedals. Gary specializes in recreations of old circuits, and this Burns Buzzaround-inspired box has four germanium NOS transistors and sounds beautifully gnarly. It improves on the original, which Robert Fripp favored in early King Crimson, by adding a volume control. I went a little stir-crazy acquiring fuzzes during Covid lockdown and now have an embarrassing amount. My other current darlings are a SoloDallas Orbiter (which balances fuzz with core-signal clarity), a Joe Gore Duh (a no-nonsense, 1-knob dirt shoveler), and my Big Knob Tone Blender MkII 66, which taught me how smooth and creamy fuzz can be with carefully calibrated settings. These pedals allow me to cover all of my favorite fuzz sounds from the past 60 years. I do have one more secret weapon fuzz that only travels to the studio: an original Maestro FZ-1 that I picked up used for about $20 in the early ’90s. It’s banged up but functional, takes two 9V batteries, and is righteously juicy.
Nick Millevoi - Senior Editor
The two greatest fuzzes I’ve ever played are a Pigdog Tone Bender build and a Paul Trombetta Bone Machine. Both experiences will stick with me for decades to come. But creations by those two masters of fuzz come with a price tag high enough to keep my time with those pedals fleeting.
Instead, my favorite fuzz is an inexpensive, mass-produced pedal that hasn’t left my board since I reviewed and subsequently purchased it in 2021: the Electro-Harmonix Ripped Speaker, designed to emulate the distorted tones on ’50s and ’60s records that were created with broken or misused gear.
Retro inspiration is not all it has to offer though. The rip knob, which controls transistor bias, is the star of the show, interacting with the fuzz level to deliver everything from a smooth, mild fuzz to sputtery mayhem that can evoke a faulty channel strip or old tube combo that’s been set ablaze. I prefer to crank the rip knob and feed it to a phaser and slapback analog delay, which gives me a bit-crushed-like gnarliness. Pull back on the rip or add a boost in front of the pedal, and it has a more organic but still gated sound, which, for me, can be just the thing to set my sound apart in a more traditional setting.
For a cool $116, the Ripped Speaker, which seems to fly under most fuzz freaks’ radars, might be the special something that complements the rest of your board or just a tone you turn to on occasion. Either way, it’s a great deal.
Luke Ottenhof - Assistant Editor
You could give me the most powerful-sounding fuzz in the world, but if it was in a stupid-looking enclosure, I don’t know if I’d give it a second look. This is just how we operate: Vision is the sense we privilege most, even in matters of audio.
Luckily, the most seismic, monstrous fuzz I’ve ever heard also happens to come in a beautiful package. The Mile End Effects Kollaps, built by Justin Cober in Montreal, measures an elephantine 7 3/8" x 4 5/8" x 1 1/2", and its MuTron-meets-’60s-Soviet aesthetic matches the sounds its guts produce. The Kollaps is modeled after the nasty Univox Super-Fuzz circuit, and carries a few of that pedal’s hallmarks, including its use of germanium diodes and midrange boost control. Cober added a switchable Baxandall active EQ circuit, with up to 12 dB of boost and cut to both low and high frequencies. Coupled with the mid-boost toggle, this gives the Kollaps a shockingly broad range of tonality to play with.With the mids off, the Kollaps is jagged and ruthless, a deafening turbojet of upper mids and chest-vibrating lows that yanks me toward the darker, less commercially successful corners of ’90s doom and noise rock. Kicking on the EQ circuit and boosting the lows turns it titanic. With the balance (volume) and expand (gain) controls maxed, the Kollaps starts to live up to its name, crumbling into a thick, overextended chaos in a way more polite fuzz circuits rarely do.
My favorite Kollaps sounds occur when the mids are engaged, for an articulate, deeply textured fuzz sound that retains your attack. Playing with your guitar’s volume knob, you can coax a range of EQ profiles and take advantage of the upper- and lower-octave content in the fuzz. With guitar volume lower, you can access some unbelievably emotive and sensitive sounds that still teeter on the edge of chaos and violence. It’s a rich, volatile circuit that gets as close as I’ve heard to a sound and physical feeling I’d call “planet-destroying.”
Charles Saufley - Gear Editor
My first fuzz, A Sovtek Big Muff, remains tied for first place among many favorites. The pedal’s most famous virtues—corpulence and sustain—are among the reasons I treasure it. But the way the Sovtek pairs with a Rickenbacker 330 and Fender Jaguar, which were once my two primary guitars for performance and recording, made it invaluable in various projects for a long time. Neither the Ricky nor the Jag are sustain machines, but the wailing mass of theBig Muff makes their focused voices an asset—inspiring tight, concise fuzz phrases, hooks, and riffs as well as articulate chords.
A silicon Fuzzrite clone built by good pal Jesse Trbovich (long-time member ofKurt Vile’s Violators) runs second place to the Sovtek in terms of tenure, and is a very different fuzz. It’s a piercing, hyper-buzzy thing, but a perfect match for a squishy 1960s Fender Bassman head and 2x12 I adore. Perversely, I sometimes couple it with a Death By Audio Thee Ffuzz Warr Overload or Wattson FY-6 Shin-Ei Super-Fuzz clone. These tandems create chaos and chance, but sing loud and melodiously too—at least when I’m not intentionally bathing in feedback. The Jext Telez Buzz Tone, a clone of the mid-’60s Selmer circuit, is often my go-to now. It’s a low-gain affair compared to the other fuzzes here, and I use it in its even-lower-gain (and vintage-correct) 3-volt setting. It’s pretty noisy, but it is thick, dynamic, detailed, raunchy, and plenty trashy when the occasion demands it. It’s also a very cool overdrive when you back off the gas.Jason Shadrick - Managing Editor
I rarely need fuzz in my everyday gigs, but it's one of the most fun effects to explore when I'm noodling around. At a NAMM show a few years ago I plugged into Mythos' Argo and as soon as I hit a note my eyes lit up. The sound of the fuzz wasn't unwieldy or hard to manage. It gave me the illusion of control while the octave was the magic dust on top. I knew right then I wasn't leaving the show without one. After I spent some time with it, I became enamored by how much more the Argo can do.
It's inspired by the Prescription Electronics C.O.B. (Clean Octave Blend), so the control set is similar. The octave is always present in the signal path, but you can dial it out with the blend knob. The fuzz and volume knobs are self explanatory, but dialing the fuzz and octave knobs all the way down gives you a killer boost pedal. I find my favorite settings are at the extremes of the fuzz and blend ranges. Typically, both are either all the way up or all the way down. Another great experiment is to turn the fuzz down and then pair it with a separate drive pedal. And in octave mode, Argo is one of those pedals that inspires you to head directly for the neck pickup and stay above the 12th fret.