The NYA by Portland, Oregon builder Jim Soloway is an unusual guitar to say the least. Its most noticeable feature is its 27” scale length neck. Although this scale length has been used on baritone guitars before, most baritones are tuned anywhere from a perfect fifth to an octave lower than standard tuning. Jim, however, came to this design by way of playing a seven string guitar tuned to standard A440. Jim has used his tried and true Swan platform as a launch pad for his Soloway Swan, Not Yet Another (NYA). That said, the NYA represents both a refinement of and departure from his previous efforts. Jim was dissatisfied with the string tension and muddy bass response he was getting out of his seven string guitars. In his quest for a more suitable instrument Jim contacted fellow Oregon guitar builder Ralph Novak. After several lengthy conversations with Ralph, Jim decided they needed to take a new approach. The NYA is the result of six years of hard work, and it’s Jim’s personal statement of what he, as a player, wanted out of a guitar.
When talking about the NYA, Jim proudly states, “It was the first chance I’ve had to build something I really wanted rather than guessing what our customers wanted.” Jim also wanted to add that the NYA heralds a radical departure from how his previous guitars were made. It also sheds light on the future of Soloway guitars.
“I’ve just sold all of my swamp ash blanks that were under 13” and I’ve just bought about 300 board feet of new lumber and now, if possible, all newer guitars will use single piece backs and tops.”
Not only is the neck slightly out of the ordinary, the body shape is also somewhat unusual. Although the body is a “double cut” visually, you can see hints of Fender, PRS, Rickenbacker, and early B.C. Rich in its design. Turning the NYA over exposes a deep heel carve around the neck’s back plate and offers excellent upper fret access. Whether playing seated or standing, the NYA is an extremely well-balanced guitar and is light and easy to play, with minimum need of adjustment for your playing style. In fact, I found that with the added neck length, arpeggiated runs were far easier to play on the NYA than they ever were on a 24.75” neck. One of the things that Jim guarantees is that his guitars will never be neck heavy—an astonishing claim, given the fact that the NYA is crowned with six Hip Shot Grip-Lock tuners. The NYA also uses an unusual 16” fretboard radius. Jim points out that classical guitars use flatter fretboard radii than many electrics. Overall, the feel of the neck is similar to a late-eighties Jackson than to that of a more conventional jazz box. Some of that “feel” is due to the ultra-thin nitro finish on the neck and fretboard. I was convinced that Jim was using an oil finish because the finish was so thin, but he said that wasn’t the case at all.
Powering the NYA was a trio of DiMarzio Tele-style pickups with an Area-T in the neck and middle, and a Virtual Solo in the bridge. Jim took yet another unexpected approach to setting up his pickups in that the mid-pickup isn’t wired through any tone controls. Jim stated that it lent to a more usable pickup and didn’t muddy its tone. Revealing yet another unexpected twist, Jim had wired the traditional neck/middle combination to select a neck/ bridge selection with the five way toggle. “I personally find that to be a really useful and more Tele-like sound,” said Jim.
Clean is as Clean Does
Playing the Soloway NYA through my Princeton Reverb was a beautiful experience. The sound was lush, buttery and organic with a hint of a big box’s openness but without a lot of the boom associated with large bodied guitars. With the five position toggle and three Strat configured pickups, you may find yourself boldly going where no Strat has gone before. Your jazz and bebop lines will have never sounded so funky. While scrolling through the NYA’s pickup options, the middle pickup I mentioned earlier really caught my ear. Not only did it not exhibit any of the nasal like quality that so many Strat midpickups have it was so open and spacious that it almost sounded like playing a dreadnought with a high quality piezo through an amp. Although the NYA may not replace an acoustic guitar for a gig, you may just want to give it a try. Overall, playing the NYA back to back with a more conventional Strat is like the difference between playing a spinet and a concert grand.
Getting Dirty
Oh, the Mesa Reverb Rocket, you nasty junkyard dog of distortion… let me hear you bark!
Plugging the NYA through the Mesa Reverb Rocket’s Lead and Contour channels was a wild ride. A lot of semi-hollow body guitars I’ve played through the Mesa’s particularly nasty brand of distortion either are able to make it across the junkyard unscathed or are mauled by its jagged teeth. I am happy to say that the NYA escaped without a scratch, a little sweaty and out of breath maybe, but alive and well. The NYA sounded huge through the Mesa and absolutely menacing when tuned to dropped D.
The Final Mojo
Perhaps I’m looking for a different rating scale for a guitar that’s so different. Jim’s carving of the top of body for the NYA model is a master builder’s tour de force. Playing the NYA after an even good Strat style guitar will make you realize how muddy and indistinct your guitar is. The NYA may not be for everyone, but for those who are willing to take a chance, the NYA is a wonderful instrument. At one time Jim lent his considerable guitar playing skills to JazzKat amps, but even he is surprised by the stylistic directions other people have taken his creations. For players who can think outside the box chord and who are willing to take a chance, the Soloway NYA is a beautiful guitar that will open up new channels for your playing. Unconventional? Yes, but in all the right ways.
Buy if...
you''re a risk taker with your playing and want a "big" sounding guitar.
Skip if...
you think the evolution of the guitar stopped before 1960.
Rating...
MSRP $3000 - Soloway Guitars- jimsoloway.com |
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Duane Denison of the Jesus Lizard, EGC Chessie in hands, coaxing some nasty tones from his Hiwatt.
The Jesus Lizard’s sixth album, Blue, served as the band’s final statement from the frontlines of noisy rock for the next 26 years. By the time of their dissolution in 1999, they’d earned a reputation for extreme performances chock full of hard-hitting, machine-like grooves delivered by bassist David Wm. Sims and, at their conclusion, drummer Mac McNeilly, at times aided and at other times punctured by the frontline of guitarist Duane Denison’s incisive, dissonant riffing, and presided over by the cantankerous howl of vocalist David Yow. In the years since, performative, thrilling bands such as Pissed Jeans, METZ, and Idles have built upon the Lizard’s musical foundation.
Denison has kept himself plenty busy over the last couple decades, forming the avant-rock supergroup Tomahawk—with vocalist Mike Patton, bassist Trevor Dunn (both from Mr. Bungle), and drummer John Stanier of Helmet—and alongside various other projects including Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers and Hank Williams III. The Jesus Lizard eventually reunited, but until now have only celebrated their catalog, never releasing new jams.
The Jesus Lizard, from left: bassist David Wm. Sims, singer David Yow, drummer Mac McNeilly, and guitarist Duane Denison.
Photo by Joshua Black Wilkins
Back in 2018, Denison, hanging in a hotel room with Yow, played a riff on his unplugged electric guitar that caught the singer’s ear. That song, called “West Side,” will remain unreleased for now, but Denison explains: “He said, ‘Wow, that’s really good. What is that?’ And I said, ‘It’s just some new thing. Why don’t we do an album?’” From those unassuming beginnings, the Jesus Lizard’s creative juices started flowing.
So, how does a band—especially one who so indelibly captured the ineffable energy of live rock performance—prepare to get a new record together 26 years after their last? Back in their earlier days, the members all lived together in a band house, collectively tending to the creative fire when inspiration struck. All these years later, they reside in different cities, so their process requires sending files back and forth and only meeting up for occasional demo sessions over the course of “three or four years.”
“When the time comes to get more in performance mode, I have a practice space. I go there by myself and crank it up. I turn that amp up and turn the metronome up and play loud.” —Duane Denison
the Jesus Lizard "Alexis Feels Sick"
Distance creates an obstacle to striking while the proverbial iron is hot, but Denison has a method to keep things energized: “Practice loud.” The guitarist professes the importance of practice, in general, and especially with a metronome. “We keep very detailed records of what the beats per minute of these songs are,” he explains. “To me, the way to do it is to run it to a Bluetooth speaker and crank it, and then crank your amp. I play a little at home, but when the time comes to get more in performance mode, I have a practice space. I go there by myself and crank it up. I turn that amp up and turn the metronome up and play loud.”
It’s a proven solution. On Rack—recorded at Patrick Carney’s Audio Eagle studio with producer Paul Allen—the band sound as vigorous as ever, proving they’ve not only remained in step with their younger selves, but they may have surpassed it with faders cranked. “Duane’s approach, both as a guitarist and writer, has an angular and menacing fingerprint that is his own unique style,” explains Allen. “The conviction in his playing that he is known for from his recordings in the ’80s and ’90s is still 100-percent intact and still driving full throttle today.”
“I try to be really, really precise,” he says. “I think we all do when it comes to the basic tracks, especially the rhythm parts. The band has always been this machine-like thing.” Together, they build a tension with Yow’s careening voice. “The vocals tend to be all over the place—in and out of tune, in and out of time,” he points out. “You’ve got this very free thing moving around in the foreground, and then you’ve got this very precise, detailed band playing behind it. That’s why it works.”
Before Rack, the Jesus Lizard hadn’t released a new record since 1998’s Blue.
Denison’s guitar also serves as the foreground foil to Yow’s unhinged raving, as on “Alexis Feels Sick,” where they form a demented harmony, or on the midnight creep of “What If,” where his vibrato-laden melodies bolster the singer’s unsettled, maniacal display. As precise as his riffs might be, his playing doesn’t stay strictly on the grid. On the slow, skulking “Armistice Day,” his percussive chording goes off the rails, giving way to a solo that slices that groove like a chef’s knife through warm butter as he reorganizes rock ’n’ roll histrionics into his own cut-up vocabulary.
“During recording sessions, his first solo takes are usually what we decide to keep,” explains Allen. “Listen to Duane’s guitar solos on Jack White’s ‘Morning, Noon, and Night,’ Tomahawk’s ‘Fatback,’ and ‘Grind’ off Rack. There’s a common ‘contained chaos’ thread among them that sounds like a harmonic Rubik’s cube that could only be solved by Duane.”
“Duane’s approach, both as a guitarist and writer, has an angular and menacing fingerprint that is his own unique style.” —Rack producer Paul Allen
To encapsulate just the right amount of intensity, “I don’t over practice everything,” the guitarist says. Instead, once he’s created a part, “I set it aside and don’t wear it out.” On Rack, it’s obvious not a single kilowatt of musical energy was lost in the rehearsal process.
Denison issues his noisy masterclass with assertive, overdriven tones supporting his dissonant voicings like barbed wire on top of an electric fence. The occasional application of slapback delay adds a threatening aura to his exacting riffage. His tones were just as carefully crafted as the parts he plays, and he relied mostly on his signature Electrical Guitar Company Chessie for the sessions, though a Fender Uptown Strat also appears, as well as a Taylor T5Z, which he chose for its “cleaner, hyper-articulated sound” on “Swan the Dog.” Though he’s been spotted at recent Jesus Lizard shows with a brand-new Powers Electric—he points out he played a demo model and says, “I just couldn’t let go of it,” so he ordered his own—that wasn’t until tracking was complete.
Duane Denison's Gear
Denison wields his Powers Electric at the Blue Room in Nashville last June.
Photo by Doug Coombe
Guitars
- Electrical Guitar Company Chessie
- Fender Uptown Strat
- Taylor T5Z
- Gibson ES-135
- Powers Electric
Amps
- Hiwatt Little J
- Hiwatt 2x12 cab with Fane F75 speakers
- Fender Super-Sonic combo
- Early ’60s Fender Bassman
- Marshall 1987X Plexi Reissue
- Victory Super Sheriff head
- Blackstar HT Stage 60—2 combos in stereo with Celestion Neo Creamback speakers and Mullard tubes
Effects
- Line 6 Helix
- Mantic Flex Pro
- TC Electronic G-Force
- Menatone Red Snapper
Strings and Picks
- Stringjoy Orbiters .0105 and .011 sets
- Dunlop celluloid white medium
- Sun Studios yellow picks
He ran through various amps—Marshalls, a Fender Bassman, two Fender Super-Sonic combos, and a Hiwatt Little J—at Audio Eagle. Live, if he’s not on backline gear, you’ll catch him mostly using 60-watt Blackstar HT Stage 60s loaded with Celestion Neo Creambacks. And while some boxes were stomped, he got most of his effects from a Line 6 Helix. “All of those sounds [in the Helix] are modeled on analog sounds, and you can tweak them endlessly,” he explains. “It’s just so practical and easy.”
The tools have only changed slightly since the band’s earlier days, when he favored Travis Beans and Hiwatts. Though he’s started to prefer higher gain sounds, Allen points out that “his guitar sound has always had teeth with a slightly bright sheen, and still does.”
“Honestly, I don’t think my tone has changed much over the past 30-something years,” Denison says. “I tend to favor a brighter, sharper sound with articulation. Someone sent me a video I had never seen of myself playing in the ’80s. I had a band called Cargo Cult in Austin, Texas. What struck me about it is it didn’t sound terribly different than what I sound like right now as far as the guitar sound and the approach. I don’t know what that tells you—I’m consistent?”
YouTube It
The Jesus Lizard take off at Nashville’s Blue Room this past June with “Hide & Seek” from Rack.
Phat Machine
The Phat Machine
The Phat Machine is designed to deliver the tone and responsiveness of a vintage germanium fuzz with improved temperature stability with no weird powering issues. Loaded with both a germanium and a silicon transistor, the Phat Machine offers the warmth and cleanup of a germanium fuzz but with the bite of a silicon pedal. It utilizes classic Volume and Fuzz control knobs, as well as a four-position Thickness control to dial-in any guitar and amp combo. Also included is a Bias trim pot and a Kill switch that allows battery lovers to shut off the battery without pulling the input cord.
Silk Worm Deluxe Overdrive
The Silk Worm Deluxe -- along with its standard Volume/Gain/Tone controls -- has a Bottom trim pot to dial in "just the right amount of thud with no mud at all: it’s felt more than heard." It also offers a Studio/Stage diode switch that allows you to select three levels of compression.
Both pedals offer the following features:
- 9-volt operation via standard DC external supply or internal battery compartment
- True bypass switching with LED indicator
- Pedalboard-friendly top mount jacks
- Rugged, tour-ready construction and super durable powder coated finish
- Made in the USA
Static Effectors’ Street Series pedals carry a street price of $149 each. They are available at select retailers and can also be purchased directly from the Static Effectors online store at www.staticeffectors.com.