![Rig Rundown: Halestorm’s Lzzy Hale and Joe Hottinger [2021]](https://www.premierguitar.com/media-library/rig-rundown-halestorm.jpg?id=27242352&width=1245&height=700&quality=85&coordinates=0%2C0%2C0%2C0)
Lzzy Hale and Joe Hottinger of the Grammy-winning rock band Halestorm recently took a break from rehearsals for their 2021 tour to talk rigs with Premier Guitar's John Bohlinger.
Shortly before this interview, Hale had become the first woman to be named a brand ambassador by Gibson. With several signature models under her name, and Hottinger's apparent obsession with SGs, it's not surprising this rundown features some primo Gibsons.
[Brought to you by D'Addario XPND Pedalboard: https://www.daddario.com/XPNDRR]
Lzzy’s No. 1
The Halestorm frontwoman's top dog is her Lzzy Hale Explorer in alpine white with gold hardware, featuring '57 Classic humbuckers, a mahogany body/neck, a rosewood bound fretboard, three control knobs (independent volumes and a master tone), and a 3-way pickup switch.
Black Dog
A study in contrast to her No. 1, this Lzzy Hale Dark Explorer in black and gold has '57 Classic humbuckers, an ebony finish, block inlays, and a solid mahogany body.
Head's Up
And here's the distinctive Explorer headstock.
Up on the Low-Down
When Lzzy wants to go low and rumbly, she plays her Custom Baritone Gibson Explorer gold top. It's got a 28" scale neck and her preferred two-tone-one-volume control setup.
Lzzy Bird
For something truly different, Hale plays her custom Explorer with a Firebird headstock, decked in black and red, with gold hardware and a pair of humbuckers from the 1970s.
Rock x 2
This EDS-1275 is literally the heaviest guitar in the Halestorm arsenal, with a standard top and baritone bottom, in SG white. It's strung with Ernie Ball paradigms (.10–.52) on top and the company's Not Even Slinky .12s for the bari half. The pickups are her preferred '57 classics.
Anyone for Chess?
If amplification were a match game, Hale would be ready. She tours with two custom Marshall custom JCM800s—one white, one black.
White On
Here's one of her 4x12 cabinets—geared up in a finish to match the head that drives it.
Lzzy's Pedalstorm
The signal runs from Hale's guitars into a Jerry Cantrell JC95 Dunlop Cry Baby wah. Then it hits a Boss TU-3, an EHX POG2, an MXR/CAE Boost/Line Driver, a vintage Klon Centaur, and a Way Huge Aqua-Puss Analog Delay Pedal. The power supply is a Strymon Zuma.
You Want SGs?
Joe Hottinger's got SGs—a fat roadcase full when he tours. He bought this 2003 SG Standard new when he joined the band that year. The pickups were changed to Burstbuckers when the originals died while on tour in Europe.
The Green Monster
This is a great shade of green, allowing the character on the wood in this kornia-body SG to emerge. It's a 2001 Gibson Custom Shop creature with custom '57 Classic humbuckers.
Double ... or Something
Not to be outshined, Joe's EDS-1275 is in super-shiny Brunswick blue sparkle. The pickups on the 6-string side are a Burstbucker 1 and 2 set. On the 12-string side, they're a 2 and 3 set. Burstbuckers 1s are low output, 2s are medium output, and 3s are overwound and hot.
Give It Up for Lester
This white silverburst '61 reissue has a Maestro tailpiece and its design comes from the era when it was called the Les Paul SG. It is stock and was built in 2010.
It's Not Easy Being Green
But it rocks—at least on this 2020 Custom Shop '61/'59 Fat Neck SG Limited Edition with three humbuckers, just like Jimi's famed white "Dick Cavett" model.
Single-Coils Going Steady
When it's time for that P-90 sound, Hottinger reaches for his 2011 50th Anniversary Pete Townshend alpine white SG. Windmilling lessons not included!
Bari or Bust
This limited edition 2013 Gibson SG Baritone has a 27"-scale neck, a Richlite fretboard, 496R and 500T humbuckers, and push-pull volume pots.
Chet's Mix
Yes, this is also a Gibson—a 1999 Custom Shop Chet Atkins SST. It has a solid top and a mahogany body, and a bridge transducer with an active preamp. Strings: Ernie Ball Acoustic Paradigm .12 sets. His electric guitars have Paradigm .10–.52 sets, mostly, and the company's Not Even Slinky .12s are on the baritone.
Amps? You Betcha
These two 2020 Marshall SV20H Studio Vintage plexi-style heads are just the tip of the iceberg of Joe's amplification setup.
Blasting from the Past
These two Marshall Super Leads are also in the game. The red one is from 1971 and the purple head is from 1973. Note the jumped inputs.
Big, Bad Bogner
This Bogner 4x12—one of two in Joe's rig—features Beyma Liberty 8-ohm speakers, which are super versatile, sonically.
Clean Stomp Space
Hottinger keeps a neat pedalboard, running cable into an Xotic XW1 wah to a Xotic XVP 250K High Impedance Volume Pedal. From there, it's a Tru-Fi Octavia Fuzz, Bogner La Grange, overdrive, Tru-Fi Colordriver 18V, Keely 30 ms Automatic Double Tracker, Electro-Harmonix POG2, Earthquaker Devices Afterneath, and Strymon TimeLine. It's all juiced by a Strymon Zuma power box.
- Gibson Announces the Grand Opening of the Gibson Garage ... ›
- Rig Rundown: Nick Raskulinecz - Premier Guitar ›
- Halestorm's Lzzy Hale and Joe Hottinger: The "Woo" Factor ... ›
- Gibson Unveils the Lzzy Hale Signature Explorerbird - Premier Guitar ›
- Lzzy Hale's Signature Kramer Voyager Guitar ›
Onstage, Tommy Emmanuel executes a move that is not from the playbook of his hero, Chet Atkins.
“My biggest decision every day on tour is, ‘What do I want to start with? How do I want to come out of the gate?’” Emmanuel explains to me over a video call. “A good opener has to have everything. It has to be full of surprise, it has to have lots of good ideas, lots of light and shade, and then, hit it again,” he says, illustrating each phrase with his hands and ending with a punch.“You lift off straightaway with the first song, you get airborne, you start reaching, and then it’s time to level out and take people on a journey.”
In May 2023, Emmanuel played two shows at the Sydney Opera House, the best performances from which have been combined on his new release, Live at the Sydney Opera House. The venue’s Concert Hall, which has a capacity of 2,679, is a familiar room for Emmanuel, but I think at this point in his career he wouldn’t bring a setlist if he was playing Wembley Stadium. On the recording, Emmanuel’s mind-blowingly dexterous chops, distinctive attack and flair, and knack for culturally resonant compositions are on full display. His opening song for the shows? An original, “Countrywide,” with a segue into Chet Atkins’ “El Vaquero.”
“When I was going to high school in the ’60s, I heard ‘El Vaquero’ on Chet Atkins’ record, [1964’s My Favorite Guitars],” Emmanuel shares. “And when I wrote ‘Countrywide’ in around ’76 or ’77, I suddenly realized, ‘Ah! It’s a bit like “El Vaquero!”’ So I then worked out ‘El Vaquero’ as a solo piece, because it wasn’t recorded like that [by Atkins originally].
“The co-writer of ‘El Vaquero’ is Wayne Moss, who’s a famous Nashville session guy who played ‘da da da’ [sings the guitar riff from Roy Orbison’s ‘Pretty Woman’]. And he played on a lot of Chet’s records as a rhythm guy. So once when I played ‘El Vaquero’ live, Wayne Moss came up to me and said, ‘You know, you did my part and Chet’s at the same time. That’s not fair!’” Emmanuel says, laughing.
Atkins is the reason Emmanuel got into performing. His mother had been teaching him rhythm guitar for a couple years when he heard Atkins on the radio and, at 6, was able to immediately mimic his fingerpicking technique. His father recognized Emmanuel’s prodigious talent and got him on the road that year, which kicked off his professional career. He says, “By the time I was 6, I was already sleep-deprived, working too hard, and being forced to be educated. Because all I was interested in was playing music.”
Emmanuel talks about Atkins as if the way he viewed him as a boy hasn’t changed. The title Atkins bestowed upon him, C.G.P. (Certified Guitar Player), appears on Emmanuel’s album covers, in his record label (C.G.P. Sounds), and is inlaid at the 12th fret on his Maton Custom Shop TE Personal signature acoustic. (Atkins named only five guitarists C.G.P.s. The others are John Knowles, Steve Wariner, Jerry Reed, and Atkins himself.) For Emmanuel, even today most roads lead to Atkins.
When I ask Emmanuel about his approach to arranging for solo acoustic guitar, he says, “It was really hit home for me by my hero, Chet Atkins, when I read an interview with him a long time ago and he said, ‘Make your arrangement interesting.’ And I thought, ‘Wow!’ Because I was so keen to be true to the composer and play the song as everyone knows it. But then again, I’m recreating it like everyone else has, and I might as well get in line with the rest of them and jump off the cliff into nowhere. So it struck me: ‘How can I make my arrangements interesting?’ Well, make them full of surprises.”
When Emmanuel was invited to contribute to 2015’s Burt Bacharach: This Guitar’s in Love with You, featuring acoustic-guitar tributes to Bacharach’s classic compositions by various artists, Emmanuel expresses that nobody wanted to take “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” due to its “syrupy” nature. But for Emmanuel, this presented an entertaining challenge.
He explains, “I thought, ‘Okay, how can I reboot “Close to You?’ So even the most jaded listener will say, ‘Holy fuck—I didn’t expect that! Wow, I really like that; that is a good melody!’ So I found a good key to play the song in, which allowed me to get some open notes that sustain while I move the chords. Then what I did is, in every phrase, I made the chord unresolve, then resolve.
Tommy Emmanuel's Gear
“I’m writing music for the film that’s in my head,” Emmanuel says. “So, I don’t think, ‘I’m just the guitar,’ ever.”
Photo by Simone Cecchetti
Guitars
- Three Maton Custom Shop TE Personals, each with an AP5 PRO pickup system
Amps
- Udo Roesner Da Capo 75
Effects
- AER Pocket Tools preamp
Strings & Picks
- Martin TE Signature Phosphor Bronze (.012–.054)
- Martin SP strings
- Ernie Ball Paradigm strings
- D’Andrea Pro Plec 1.5 mm
- Dunlop medium thumbpicks
“And then to really put the nail in the coffin, at the end, ‘Close to you’ [sings melody]. I finished on a major 9 chord which had that note in it, but it wasn’t the key the song was in, which is a typical Stevie Wonder trick. All the tricks I know, the wonderful ideas that I’ve stolen, are from Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie, James Taylor, Carole King, Neil Diamond. All of the people who wrote really incredibly great pop songs and R&B music—I stole every idea I could, and I tried to make my little two-and-a -half minutes as interesting and entertaining as possible. Because entertainment equals: Surprise me.”
I share with Emmanuel that the performances on Live at the Sydney Opera House, which include his popular “Beatles Medley,” reminded me of another possible arrangement trick. In Harpo Marx’s autobiography, Harpo Speaks, I preface, Marx writes of a lesson he learned as a performer—to “answer the audience’s questions.” (Emmanuel says he’s a big fan of the book and read it in the early ’70s.) That happened for me while listening to the medley, when, after sampling melodies from “She’s a Woman” and “Please Please Me,” Emmanuel suddenly lands on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”
I say, “I’m waiting for something that hits more recognizably to me, and when ‘While My Guitar’ comes in, that’s like answering my question.”
“It’s also Paul and John, Paul and John, George,” Emmanuel replies. “You think, ‘That’s great, that’s great pop music,’ then, ‘Wow! Look at the depth of this.’”
Often Emmanuel’s flights on his acoustic guitar are seemingly superhuman—as well as supremely entertaining.
Photo by Ekaterina Gorbacheva
A trick I like to employ as a writer, I say to Emmanuel, is that when I’m describing something, I’ll provide the reader with just enough context so that they can complete the thought on their own.
“You can do that musically as well,” says Emmanuel. He explains how, in his arrangement of “What a Wonderful World,” he’ll play only the vocal melody. “When people are asking me at a workshop, ‘How come you don’t put chords behind that part?’ I say, ‘I’m drawing the melody and you’re putting in all the background in your head. I don’t need to tell you what the chords are. You already know what the chords are.’”
“Wayne Moss came up to me and said, ‘You know, you did my part and Chet’s at the same time. That’s not fair!’”
Another track featured on Live at the Sydney Opera House is a cover of Paul Simon’s “American Tune” (which Emmanuel then jumps into an adaptation of the Australian bush ballad, “Waltzing Matilda”). It’s been a while since I really spent time with There GoesRhymin’ Simon (on which “American Tune” was first released), and yet it sounded so familiar to me. A little digging revealed that its melody is based on the 17th-century Christian hymn, “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded,” which was arranged and repurposed by Bach in a few of the composer’s works. The cross-chronological and genre-lackadaisical intersections that come up in popular music sometimes is fascinating.
“I think the principle right there,” Emmanuel muses, “is people like Bach and Beethoven and Mozart found the right language to touch the heart of a human being through their ears and through their senses ... that really did something to them deep in their soul. They found a way with the right chords and the right notes, somehow. It could be as primitive as that.
Tommy Emmanuel has been on the road as a performing guitarist for 64 years. Eat your heart out, Bob Dylan.
Photo by Jan Anderson
“It’s like when you’re a young composer and someone tells you, ‘Have a listen to Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind,”’ he continues. “‘Listen to how those notes work with those chords.’ And every time you hear it, you go, ‘Why does it touch me like that? Why do I feel this way when I hear those chords—those notes against those chords?’ I say, it’s just human nature. Then you wanna go, ‘How can I do that!’” he concludes with a grin.
“You draw from such a variety of genres in your arrangements,” I posit. “Do you try to lean into the side of converting those songs to solo acoustic guitar, or the side of bridging the genre’s culture to that of your audience?”
“I stole every idea I could, and I tried to make my little two-and-a-half minutes as interesting and entertaining as possible. Because entertainment equals: Surprise me.”
“If I was a method actor,” Emmanuel explains, “what I’m doing is—I’m writing music for the film that’s in my head. So, I don’t think, ‘I’m just the guitar,’ ever. I always think it has to have that kind of orchestral, not grandeur, but … palette to it. Because of the influence of Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel, and Elton John, especially—the piano guys—I try to use piano ideas, like putting the third in the low bass a lot, because guitar players don’t necessarily do that. And I try to always do something that makes what I do different.
“I want to be different and recognizable,” he continues. “I remember when people talked about how some players—you just hear one note and you go, ‘Oh, that’s Chet Atkins.’ And it hit me like a train, the reason why a guy like Hank Marvin, the lead guitar player from the Shadows.... I can tell you: He had a tone that I hear in other players now. Everyone copied him—they just don’t know it—including Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, all those people. I got him up to play with me a few times when he moved to Australia, and even playing acoustic, he still had that sound. I don’t know how he did it, but it was him. He invented himself.”
YouTube It
Emmanuel performs his arrangement of “What a Wonderful World,” illustrating how omitting a harmonic backdrop can have a more powerful effect, especially when playing such a well-known melody.
PowerStage 700 Bass is compact and durable for easy transport yet powerful enough to fill any venue. This world-class bass head can also serve as the ideal clean power platform to amplify your preamp or modeler. Streamline your rig without compromising your sound and focus on what truly matters—your music.
Designed by Seymour Duncan’s legendary engineer Kevin Beller, a lifelong bass player, this 700-watt bass head delivers unparalleled clarity and performance in a lightweight, rugged package. Whether plugging in on stage or in the studio, PowerStage 700Bass provides tight low-end and rich harmonics, with a footswitchable built-in overdrive for an extra layer of sonic versatility.
A robust, bass-optimized EQ (treble, low mid, high mid, bass and presence) tailors your sound to any room. Need to switch between active and passive basses? You’re covered - PowerStage700 Bass includes a convenient -10db pad control. Multiple output options (¼”, Speakon, XLRDI, and headphone) work for any setup, whether powering cabinets, going direct to a PA, or recording straight into your audio interface.
- 700 Watts of Power at 4 ohms• Preamp voiced for a wide range of vintage & amp; modern bass sounds
- Built-in Overdrive that can go from a light vintage saturation to full-throttle bone-grinding distortion (with optional foot-switchable control)
- Effects loop allows for post-preamp processing and easy integration with modelers and preamp pedals
- 4 band EQ, Sweepable mid controls, and presence button offer dynamic tone shaping possibilities
- Aux input
- Super lightweight and durable chassis for easy transport with our optional gig bag or rack ears.
For more information, please visit seymourduncan.com.
