The UFO guitarist who rose to fame during the '80s shred boom reveals his unlikely Southern rock hero, his holy trinity of desert-island discs, and more.
Since 2017, HeadRush primarily built super-versatile floor units aimed at players that like large-format, feature-packed boards. The new MX5 is a clear downsizing move. It's considerably smaller than the company's Looperboard and Gigboard models, but it also includes features not typically seen on setups in this price range.
The Power of Touch
At about 3.5 pounds, the MX5 is made for players who don't like a complicated or back-breaking load in. On the back side of the unit, you'll find an input, stereo outputs, an effects loop, an additional expression pedal input, headphone output, aux input, and MIDI, and USB ports. These options are standard on most modeling units, but kudos are due to HeadRush for retaining these features while keeping the price low and the size so small.
All of HeadRush's boards feature a full-color LCD display, and the MX5's 4" display is just big enough to be readable and effective. Naturally, larger displays make it easier to tweak rig and effect settings on the fly. But given the small size and price of the MX5, they've accomplished a lot with a little. Using other modelers, I tend to default to programming presets via a standalone editor. But the gurus at HeadRush made the MX5's interface very intuitive and maintained a balance between function and complexity. There are just enough parameters to give you plenty of control without falling into option paralysis.
The amp emulations ranged from good to near perfect.
When you open a blank preset, you're able to load up to 11 different elements to your virtual signal path. With a single touch of the signal path button, you can call up one of three templates. Two of these offer parallel paths for more complex setups. Because the MX5 has just three footswitches, I wanted to start with a straight-ahead setup that would cover clean, crunch, and high-gain. My rig started with a JTM45-style head feeding a 4x12 cab simulation and miked with a virtual SM57. From there, I added a "green" distortion, a full-range boost, '80s-style delay, and a plate reverb.
Sounds To Start With
Headrush's core technology is derived from a significantly enhanced, evolved, and reconstructed Avid Eleven Rack processor.. The delays and reverbs in the Avid system were excellent, and they've carried over nicely to the MX5. As with many modelers, distortion can be the toughest nut to crack, and in the MX5, the low- and mid-gain dirt emulations lack a little nuance and depth. High-gain distortions, however, were much more convincing.
Many modelers come with effect presets that may not immediately match your needs. But the MX5 does something that I haven't seen before: It loads up several presets for each effect. So, when I dropped a reverb in my signal chain, the screen provided the means to edit specific parameters as well as alternative presets that were ideal jumping-off points. This feature adds a lot of flexibility on the fly. Preset switching, by the way, is gapless and you have the option to program in delay and reverb tails and spillover.
With 46 amps and 63 effects—not to mention all the cab and mic options—it would take a novel to describe every sound available in the MX5. But generally speaking, the amp emulations ranged from good to near perfect (particularly the classic rock half stacks). Many modulation effects were standouts as well. And if there's an analog pedal in your collection that isn't represented in the HeadRush's library, the effects loop makes it easy to work the real deal into the mix.
Hit Record!
Most modelers have robust recording features these days. The MX5 is no different. You can record directly to your DAW of choice with a single USB cable. (The USB connection is also used for firmware upgrades, backing up presets, and loading loops and IRs.) All the clips you hear with the online version of this review were recorded direct into Logic Pro X without any additional sweetening. While not essential, a good audio interface is a good thing to have if you want to get the most value from the HeadRush—enabling you to easily move from re-amping duties to fine tuning tones within a mix, or jamming along with a backing track.
The Verdict
At just a hair under $400, the MX5 sits comfortably on the affordable side of the contemporary all-in-one floor processor price spectrum. It's an even better value when you consider the built-in expression pedal. The unit is powerful and stable, and I never had to worry about DSP power when using processing-intensive effects. Although the distortion and overdrive emulations weren't head spinning, there were plenty of amps and effects that authentically copped the sound and feel of their analog counterparts. The MX5 might not have the sonic depth of more expensive units, but pound-for-pound—and at this price—it more than holds its own while offering the very valuable convenience that comes from a small package.
Emily Wolfe lets loose, with an Epiphone Sheraton around her shoulders. Her signature Sheraton Stealth was released in 2021. "The guitar is the perfect frequency range for my soul," she says.
Photo by Brittany Durdin
As she sharpens her sound, Wolfe is helping to keep the rock genre alive—not by mimicry or séance, but by taking the grit of the past and expanding it with a broader emotional vocabulary, confidently concise guitar work, and pop-inspired arrangements.
Wolfe, who's toured and performed with Gary Clark Jr., the Toadies, Heart, and the Pretenders, doesn't get why people can be so confounded by the third descriptor. "Some of my rock friends say, 'Pop isn't relevant,' and I'm like, 'What are you talking about—it's everywhere!' It's so sticky for people, and that's really fascinating to me. I want my music to have that quality … but also the realness of a raw guitar tone."
Epiphone Exclusive | “No Man” by Emily Wolfe
What's exciting about her latest full-length release, Outlier, is how she captures exactly what she's talking about. The songs bleed like a wounded gunslinger over a silvery backdrop of deftly layered synths, tight vocal harmonies, and blended acoustic and electronic drums. Over the course of the album, she sings, "I just can't get close enough to you," ("Vermillion Park"), "I'm addicted to the broken," ("Never Gonna Learn"), and "I'll chase you 'til my lungs give out," ("My Lungs Give Out"). It's through her adept genre fusion and aching romanticism that Wolfe offers her audience something to connect with that's not just clever, but also powerful.
"An emotion that I felt 10 years ago could come out in a bend on the low E."
Stone Age Methods
Outlier was produced by Michael Shuman, bassist of Queens of the Stone Age, who Wolfe describes as "like, the coolest guy that I've ever seen in my life." It started out as a long-distance project, as she's based in Austin and Shuman is in Los Angeles. They sent demos back and forth before Wolfe went into the studio in the fall of 2020. (She was later joined by bassist Evan Nicholson and drummer Clellan Hyatt.) With Shuman's encouragement, Wolfe set aside perfectionist leanings and took a more adventurous approach to the recording process than she had in the past.
Emily Wolfe's semi-hollow Epiphone signature model, the Sheraton Stealth, is a modern take on John Lee Hooker's longtime favorite, the Sheraton. It has a layered maple body with a mahogany neck, signature inlays, a Tune-o-matic bridge, CTS pots, two volume controls and one tone control, and Epiphone's Alnico Classic PRO pickups.
Photo by Barbara FG
On her 2019 self-titled first album, Wolfe exacted every tone before entering the studio, but this time around, she allowed more room for spontaneity, which made things far more relaxed. "It was easy to get into the flow and be really present," she says. "I think I'll probably do the next record like that because it was a lot more fun." One trick she made use of with engineer Michael Harris involved an MPC (music production center) controller and a few floppy discs of drum samples. Throughout the recording process, the samples were layered on top of the acoustic drums.
But that experimentalism came with some apprehension. "I said to [Shuman], 'How am I going to replicate this sound live?'" Wolfe says. "He was like, 'It doesn't matter, dude, just make the best record you can and figure out the live stuff later.'" Shuman's attitude toward recording contributed to the flexible atmosphere that enabled Wolfe to evolve, but not without some challenges. "There was one instance when, on 'Damage Control,' I didn't have anything prepared [for the solo]," she says, "and he was like, 'Go up to my living room and write something and come back down when you have it.'"
"If I get a new piece of gear, I have to figure out every single part of it before I can really use it."
The Persistence of Pop
On Outlier, Wolfe's ambition was to create a golden blend of classic eras, drawing upon '60s Motown, '70s glam, '80s synth-pop, and '90s grunge to produce something as enduring as those styles. "If you listen to Motown, in the first minute or so, the hook is there. I wanted to bring that in, too," she relates. "There's so much rawness [to classic rock]; the edges are not perfect, but there's a magic in that. There's also the side of modern stuff where the edges are really perfect and very computerized. I wanted to mix those together and see what would happen."
Wolfe believes that modern pop stars are not given enough credit for their work ethic, daring, and conceptual talent. If you doubt that, consider Carly Rae Jepsen, who wrote 200 songs in the course of producing her albums Emotion (2015) and Dedicated (2019). And there's the prolific Ed Sheeran, who in 2015 sold out the 90,000-capacity Wembley Stadium for three nights in a row as a solo act, and Swedish writer and producer Max Martin, who's written 25 No. 1 hits (split among 10 different artists), which is five more than the Beatles have as a band. "I have a theory that Max Martin is an alien. He's in the Illuminati, I swear to God," says Wolfe, laughing.
Emily Wolfe's Gear
Although she has just two albums, Wolfe‚ caught here onstage at Cambridge, Massachusetts' Middle East nightclub in November 2021, released three singles and an EP before her first full-length, Emily Wolfe, arrived in 2019. Her new Outlier shows remarkable album-to-album growth.
Photo by Brent Goldman
Guitars
- Epiphone Emily Wolfe Sheraton Stealth
- 2018 Gibson Firebird
Amps
- Fender Hot Rod DeVille 4x10
String and Picks
- Ernie Ball Slinky Cobalt (.010–.046)
- Dunlop Tortex Jazz III .88 mm picks
Effects
- RJM Mastermind PBC/10 switcher
- Origin Effects Cali76
- Dunlop Cry Baby Q Zone
- EarthQuaker Devices Tentacle
- EarthQuaker Devices Dirt Transmitter
- MXR Six Band EQ
- Fulltone OCD
- Klon KTR
- Walrus Audio Julia Analog Chorus
- MXR Carbon Copy
- Strymon Flint Tremolo and Reverb
- Vertex Boost
"The backbone of so much of our industry is pop," she continues, expressing her admiration for artists like Demi Lovato and Ariana Grande, and pop production as a whole. "I try to dive in and analyze: 'How did this producer make this song stick in my head immediately and live in my soul?' If it comes on in a restaurant and I know every word.… I want my music to have that."
An Ear for Overdrive
We mentioned earlier that Wolfe can be exacting when it comes to finding the right tone. She fuels those analytical tendencies with as much gear knowledge as she can imbibe, saying that she feels lost if she doesn't know something about a piece of gear in her palette. "If I get a new piece of gear, I have to figure out every single part of it before I can really use it," she says.
TIDBIT: Wolfe's latest album was produced by Michael Shuman, bassist of Queens of the Stone Age. The guitarist describes Shuman as "like, the coolest guy that I've ever seen in my life," and he encouraged her most adventurous work.
In her spare time, Wolfe explores every pedal she can get her hands on and entertains herself by searching for the perfect combination for her signature sound. She's put together a "desert island board" comprised of three pedals: the EarthQuaker Devices Tentacle analog octave-up pedal, running into a Fulltone OCD, and an MXR Six Band EQ. "That's the sound that belongs to me," she says. The sequence creates a "crazy fuzztone" from the overdrive. Then she uses the EQ to reduce some of the lows and boost the mids for a sound she says will get her guitar to cut through any mix.
She says she never really liked using chorus until she stumbled across the Walrus Audio Julia Analog Chorus/Vibrato pedal. "It's pretty inspiring. 'My Lungs Give Out' was pretty much because of that pedal," she shares. "It kind of wrote the intro for me." The song's gentle vocal and subtle use of the pedal in the intro, followed by her singing paralleled by quietly distorted guitar in the pre-chorus, calls St. Vincent to mind. That's a comparison Wolfe responds to favorably.
Rig Rundown - Emily Wolfe
On top of her signature pedal combination, Wolfe now has a signature guitar. In March, Epiphone debuted the Emily Wolfe Sheraton Stealth, a black, semi-hollowbody electric guitar with diamond-shaped soundholes and gold hardware, set up with two Alnico Classic PRO humbuckers. "The Stealth is my dream guitar and gift to the music community," says Wolfe. "Playing it is like putting on a perfectly worn-in pair of jeans. It just fits. The guitar is the perfect frequency range for my soul." And for her music—from her stinging blues-rock bedrock to the expressionist colors of her newest work. (It was first featured in our Rig Rundown above.)
Melodic Mindfulness
Wolfe was only 5 when she found herself intensely drawn to the guitar after seeing one hanging on the wall at a thrift shop. That instrument became her first. But it wasn't until she was in high school that she fell in love with it, which is also when Wolfe first got into songwriting. Her early creative process involved writing down lyrics by L.A. indie-rockers Rogue Wave, her favorite band at the time, on one side of a page, then writing her own lyrics on the other. "They obviously weren't great," she says, "but over time I sharpened that skill."
Wolfe has a reputation for high-energy shows that bring the bones of her songs and the classic rock and blues foundation of her guitar playing to the fore.
Photo by Brent Goldman
Today, she fosters a kind of spiritual connection with her music. "Whenever I get an idea, I try to nurture it and treat it like this thing that wants to be born, then listen to it and what it wants to be," she says. She remembers that someone once suggested she pray to the song she wants to write, to make sure it comes from her and no one else. This advice made a lasting impression. "I was like, 'Oh shit, okay,'" she laughs. "Sometimes I'm like, all of these artists that have passed away—where did their talent go? Where did their songs go? Maybe they're sending these songs down to other people."
In a more concrete sense, Outlier is a departure from Wolfe's first album, which was slightly more traditional and featured a guitar solo on almost every song. Switching her mental focus to hooks and arrangements breathed new life into her writing. While she still feels proud of her earlier work, Wolfe feels she's headed in the right direction. "I wanted to make something that would be classic 10, 20, 30 years from now," she says. "That was the goal, and I think we achieved it."
Emily Wolfe - Damage Control (live in the studio)
With her signature Epiphone Sheraton Stealth, Emily Wolfe sprays plenty of fat-toned fuzz over Outlier's "Damage Control," and cleans things up a bit for her solo, which kicks in at 2:30 and has a sequel 30 seconds later where you can really hear the EarthQuaker Devices Tentacle at work.
