In the midst of working on her first album, the 17-year-old guitar star takes PG through her rig.
Guitarist Grace Bowers is a 17-year old California transplant tearing it up in Nashville. Currently working on her first album with producer John Osborne of the Brothers Osborne, Bowers invited John Bohlinger and the PG team to walk through her studio and live rig.
Brought to you by
Molly Tuttle Knows: https://ddar.io/tuttle-rr
XPND Pedalboard: https://ddar.io/xpnd_rr
D’Addario: https://ddar.io/wykyk-rr
Mostly Stock Special
Bowers’ number-one is her mostly stock 1961 Gibson SG Special. The P90s and the skinny neck are a perfect fit for her style. The tuners were changed at some point, and the whammy is no longer attached, but the rest of the axe is original. This guitar and all others are strung with D’Addario .010s.
Osbourne's ES
For PAF humbucker tone on the album, Grace plays John Osborne’s all-stock 1960 Gibson ES-335.
With a Little Help From Her Friends
The one acoustic on the album is this 1968 Gibson 12-string acoustic, on loan from a friend.
Deluxe Simplicity
Bowers keeps it simple with a stock, new-ish Fender Deluxe Reverb amp.
It's Not a Phase, Mom!
Bowers’ pedal setup includes a Dunlop Crybaby Wah, Grindstone Audio Solutions Night Shade Drive, EarthQuaker Devices Tone Job, MXR Phase 90, MXR Phase 95, and Boss DD-2. Bowers powers them with a Voodoo Labs Pedal Power ISO-5.
Shop Grace Bowers' Rig
Gibson SG Special - Vintage Cherry
Gibson ES-335 Semi-Hollowbody Electric Guitar
Gibson Acoustic J-45 12-string Acoustic-Electric Guitar
Fender '68 Custom Deluxe Reverb 1x12" Combo Amp
Dunlop CBJ95 Cry Baby Junior Wah Pedal
MXR Phase 90
Boss DD-3T
EarthQuaker Devices Tone Job V2
Voodoo Lab Pedal Power ISO-5
D'Addario NYXL1046 NYXL Nickel Wound Electric Guitar Strings - .010-.046 Regular Light
How many guitars, pedals, and amps do you need? Enough to make you happy. But window shopping alone has its own benefits.
I just got back from the NAMM show, and I am suppressing the nervous twitch of desire. My eyes and ears were flooded with all kinds of great gear, from cutting edge software plugins to microphones to—my favorites—pedals, amps, and guitars. With so much new gear around, G.A.S. was so abundant you could almost smell it hanging over the show floor. (Sorry, I could not resist.)
As you all know, I’m talking about Gear Acquisition Syndrome, the disease for which there is no cure. I have 15 guitars—17, if you count a cigar box and a diddley bow—that cover the sonic waterfront for me and then some. So why would I want more? My tube and solid-state amps are carefully curated so I can recreate all the classic tones I love, and with my quirky playing approach and equally carefully assembled pedalboard, I can put my own spin on every one of them.
And yet … I return with a pocketful of maybes. Maybe that new semi-hollow with the sleek neck and coil-splitting would get me another tone I can’t quite access now? Maybe that pedal would make it easier to accommodate pitch shifting while I solo? Maybe it’s time to add a bona fide high-gain amp, or dive into modeling?
I used to think these impulses were unhealthy. Especially when I was a touring indie musician and had no money to spend on gear. (One of musical life’s great ironies is that club-level working musicians often earn so little that they can’t afford to increase or upgrade the tools of their craft.) But I’ve changed my mind, thanks to my dog.
“You should never pick up interesting things with your mouth.”
Dolly, who is going on 17, is slow … or perhaps methodical … when we go on walks. But every inch of the way she is sniffing, her ears are up, and she stops to spend time looking at and smelling anything that captures her interest, even for a moment. That’s a great way to spend NAMM and to examine gear, with senses and imagination open, considering the potential of everything for your music, prepared to evaluate impulses without prejudice. (But, unlike Dolly, you should never pick up interesting things with your mouth.)
Considering a piece of gear is not the same as buying it, or I’d be broke. And evaluating these flirtations can lead to something good. Let’s say you’re smitten with a brand-new $250 modulation pedal. But after careful consideration and inspection, you realize you can get a similar sound with the chorus or vibrato you already own, and a delay or reverb pedal. The tempting new gear has led you down a path of finding a new, purposeful sound in your current gear. Same with a drive pedal. It’s fresh, it’s raw, it’s low and singing—and maybe with a bit of compression it isn’t very far from the sound you can get with your current overdrive if you just roll back the tone controls on your 6-string. And what about that semi-hollow? Maybe what I really need is a 10-band EQ pedal so I can approximate semi-hollow and hollowbody tones on all my guitars at whim, which would certainly inject a different voice into the solos or choruses of songs in my repertoire. Sometimes looking at new gear reminds us of the full range of our current musical real estate holdings. And that’s great. It’s easy to get in a rut and overlook the potential of gear you already own. (Parallel question: How many of you really make full use of the tone and volume controls on your instruments? I find this to be an oddly neglected zone of exploration, even this many years beyond Eric Clapton’s unfortunately dubbed “woman tone.”)
That said, there’s also not a damn thing wrong with buying some new gear. In fact, it’s great. Guitars, pedals, amps, microphones, plugins, and even accessories seem to get better all the time, which means we probably all have some room for upgrades if we’re able to make them. Same with the tones produced by modern emulations of vintage gear, which ideally get more on the nose with every iteration, while adding improvements to tonality and performance. In terms of consistency and playability, today’s well-made guitars are perhaps the finest ever built, in some cases outperforming the templates that inspired them at much lower cost. And, as the saying goes, every guitar—or pedal, or amp—has new songs inside of it, waiting to be discovered.
Hopefully you’ve gorged on the videos and reports from the NAMM floor that we’ve shared at premierguitar.com with you this month. There was a lot to see, hear, and smell. Well, maybe not smell, but I think you know what I mean. Never be afraid to chase gear temptation, because it can often lead you to interesting places.
The hard-rocking Aussie butt-kicker goes minimalist for his band’s current tour: a Line 6 HX Stomp, three guitars, and a modest pedalboard. And yes, he’s slowly working toward a new album, too.
When we walked into Nashville’s Eastside Bowl for this Rig Rundown with Wolfmother’s alpha canine, Andrew Stockdale, it sounded like he was playing his SG through a Marshall stack at head-ripping volume. Nope! Stockdale was blasting skulls apart with a Line 6 HX stomp doing the heavy tonal lifting. Surprise!
It's part of his strategy for traveling lite in support of Rock Out, the Australian outfit’s 2021 album, on a make-up tour of the States that was preempted by the Covid shutdown. For Stockdale, the rest of his formula for playing his blood-and-guys rock 'n' roll live includes an SG, a White Falcon, and a vintage Supro, and … no traditional amps.
“I used to have, like, three Voxes–cabs and everything up there. And we had a trailer behind the bus and two guys to carry it, who'd have a beer and high-five each other after they loaded out,” Stockdale recounts. “Now they‘re gone, all the amps, and them gone.”
Here’s a close-up look at what’s onstage with Stockdale right now, as he uses minimalist gear to create maximum sound!
Brought to you by D'Addario:
https://ddar.io/wykyk-rr
https://www.daddario.com/XPNDRR
The Red Dog
This ’61 Gibson SG reissue with 61T humbuckers is a loaner. Stockdale flew from Australia without guitars—part of his smart-travel initiative. He strings his electrics with .010 to .042 sets from Ernie Ball. He also uses EB’s .88 mm picks. His SG’s control dials? They’re all the way up, my friends! At home, or in Europe on tour, he plays an ’80s black SG and an Epiphone Explorer
Supro, Man
This vintage mother-of-toilet-seat Supro was a gift from Seasick Steve—who Stockdale went surfing with … in England. (Right?) Even more odd is Stockdale’s testimony that Steve is an excellent surfer. This 1-pickup model appears to be a late-’50s Belmont, replete with the original pickup. If you haven’t played a guitar with one of the big-footprint Supro pickups, you're missing a truly special experience. Just ask Ry Cooder.
Big Bird
Stockdale uses this Gretsch White Falcon on the song “Apple Tree.” It had a neck break near the body joint on a flight in Australia, and Stockdale glued it up himself, letting it set in a clamp. This model was introduced in 1954, but it sure as hell does more than twang.
Board to Be Wild
Stockdale moved from traditional amps to Line 6 a few years ago, and blends in with his own pedals, to “give it more character.” His board’s layout is a Snark floor tuner, an EHX Micro Synth (a Wolfmother staple), an Xotic AC Booster, an EHX Micro POG, a Dunlop Cry Baby 535Q Multi-Wah, a Boss TR-2 tremolo, a CIOKS DC5 power supply, and Shure GLXDC+ wireless. Unfortunately, he left the wireless transmitter in a guitar case at home for this tour. Whoops!