The blues-rocker’s ursine tone comes courtesy of Tom Anderson, Orange, a handful of pedals, and pure personal grit. Plus—why she’s started playing in 432 Hz tuning.
We thought a grizzly bear had entered Nashville’s 3rd & Lindsley when Hannah Wicklund fired up her rig at soundcheck on March 20, when she headlined the club with her band the Steppin' Stones. Luckily, it was just the rude tone of her Tom Anderson Guitarworks Drop Top Classic model pumping through the sneer of her Orange head and cab, so … no carnage, but some echoes of classic Peter Green.
Although Wicklund—who was the subject of a PG profile in 2018—has U.S. and Canadian tour dates scheduled through early September, this was a rare stop in the South Carolina native’s adopted home town. She’s also been at work on a sequel to her 2018 album, Hannah Wicklund & the Steppin’ Stones, which she says is a coming-of-age story that will accent both her songwriting and her feminine side, although still showcase her 6-string chemistry. And speaking of chemistry, there’s an almost mystical conversation about tuning in 432 Hz in the Rundown that you won't want to miss.
Wicklund’s alchemical adventure began when she was 9 and her father gifted her an Anderson model. Thirteen years later, she’s still loyal to the brand, so that’s a good place for our Rundown to start.
Brought to you by D’Addario Nexxus 360 Rechargeable Tuner.
The Green Tiger
This is Wicklund’s main silence-killer: a Tom Anderson Drop Top Classic model with a wickedly striped finish. There’s a 5 db boost switch between the tone and volume controls, and the maple neck, with 22 jumbo frets, is slim and speedy. The instrument has a tremolo bridge, but Wicklund sometimes leaves the bar in the case.
Flaming T
Her backup for the 3rd & Lindsley show was an Anderson Cobra T, with a single-cut mahogany body and a mahogany/rosewood neck of the same dimensions as her Angel. Wicklund says she finds both guitars fairly interchangeable, “but this one screams a little bit more,” with its double humbuckers. She also likes the contoured backs, for comfort. Her new, pink Anderson Raven model stayed home for this gig.
The Cobra’s Head
No fangs. Just an artful contour, 6 on a side, and a tastefully integrated blend of finish and logo.
All in the Family
Here’s a look at the nucleus of Wicklund’s burly tones: her Tom Anderson Cobra T and Drop Top Classic, alongside her Orange Rocker 30 and 2x10 head.
It’s in the Wires
Her strings are D’Addario XL’s, gauged .011–.046.
House Rocker
This Rocker 30 head replaced a Rock 30 combo Wicklund had relied on but was mothballed when she decided she wanted the bigger blast and versatility of switching between 2x12 and 4x12 cabinets. Her settings: dirty volume at 11 o’clock , dirty hi at 10, dirty mid nearly at noon, dirty low nearly at 1, dirty gain at 1 o’clock, and natural volume at 1 o’clock.
Head and Shoulders
Here’s the head and cab. The cabinet has two 10" Celestion speakers and is open-backed. She also has a closed-back version.
All Aboard
Wicklund’s pedalboard is stacked for knuckle-bruising. Once the signal gets past her MXR Talk Box and Dunlop JC95 Jerry Cantrell Signature Cry Baby, it hits the channel switch for her Orange head. That stays in overdrive mode for about 75 percent of her set, which she says gives her sound its grizzly-bear lows. Next up is a classic—a Boss BD-2 Blues Driver. But this one has a Robert Keeley mod that adds to and opens up the low end, and keeps mids and highs better defined. Wicklund is especially fond of deploying the BD-2 with some atmospheric help from her Dunlop EP103 Echoplex Delay on her song “Ghost.” Next, a J. Rockett Archer—one of the hardest working Klon clones in show business. She matches it with the Blues Driver for singing, biting solos. There’s also an MXR Micro Flanger and an Electro-Harmonix POG, which lend a very cool high overtone to bends. Since the Orange 30 is a ’verb-less head, Wicklund uses a T. Rex House Mate Tube Reverb pedal, which she keeps on a hall setting, situated next to her Peterson StroboStomp HD. You want more? There’s also an MXR Carbon Copy Analog Delay and a Keeley Rotten Apple op-amp fuzz pedal.
BD Eyes
Take a look at the lower right corner of the control section. That’s the toggle that activates the Keeley mod.
Guitar Talk
Oh! And back to that Talk Box. Here’s a close-up view of this classic device that is making a resurgence among psyche-retro-delic players. Wicklund really lays into the talker, turning heads with its gritty, warbling, lung-driven tones. In her early years onstage, playing in a classic rock cover band, she used the pedal to chase the signatures of Joe Walsh, Peter Frampton, Jeff Beck, and other notable Talk Box users.
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The Jack White Pano Verb features unique stereo-imagine options. “[White] wanted to be able to do sort of startling things with each speaker’s content,” says Fender’s Stan Cotey.
Hooking up with Fender for the Jack White Signature Collection—which includes the Signature model hot-rod Jack White TripleCaster Telecaster and the stunning Jack White TripleSonic Acoustasonic—is as big as it gets, and this week’s announcement is proportionately epic.
The all-new Jack White Pano Verb amp looks to be one of the most forward-thinking advances in tube amps we’ve seen in … well, a very long time! Although it’s roughly inspired by three vintage Fender models—a 1964 Vibroverb, a 1960 Vibrasonic, and a 1993 Vibro-King—the Pano Verb is a rare all-new design that is poised to thrill. The single-channel stereo amp delivers 70 watts of combined power and features stereo harmonic tremolo and stereo reverb circuits, with unique routing options through the hip pair of 15" and 10" speakers. If you haven’t checked out Fender’s video announcing the amp, prepare to have your mind blown by the possibilities.
“It wasn’t based on what we could or couldn’t do, or what even was or wasn’t possible. It was just what Jack was looking to accomplish.”
Fender Vice President of Research and Development Stan Cotey, who worked closely with White to develop the prototypes for the Pano Verb, says, “There were no restrictions as far as how wild something could be. It wasn’t based on what we could or couldn’t do or what even was or wasn’t possible. It was just what Jack was looking to accomplish.” Putting those goals into action was a kick for Cotey. “I love the fact that we’re still pushing the idea of vacuum tubes and that there are things remaining to be done,” he says. “And [the Pano Verb] is a really crazy thing. It’s fun when one of the larger companies tackles a big crazy thing and releases it in a bold manner.”
We rang up Cotey to get the scoop on designing the amp as we wait to get our hands on one.
Cotey calls the Pano Verb “a really crazy thing,” and says, “It’s fun when one of the larger companies tackles a big crazy thing and releases it in a bold manner.”
The Pano Verb has a refreshingly unique and adventurous set of features.
Stan Cotey: There’s two separate power amps, there’s two separate preamps, there’s a reverb circuit. There are two separate harmonic vibrato circuits. There’s two full, separate amps in it—there’s one power supply, but everything else, there’s at least two of.
There are several different kinds of stereo interaction that could happen. The harmonic vibrato could be stereo. The reverb, even though it’s a mono tank, could be steered to the speakers differently, which kind of gives a stereo-imaging thing. So, that opens up myriad possibilities for how things could work.
How involved was Jack in the design?
Cotey: He was completely hardcore. He cared in great detail, exactly down to fine decimal points, how it worked. He was very particular about the voicing. He was very particular about the features he knew. He’s pretty studio savvy, so he had a sense of routing, how he wanted the stereo interaction of the sections to work together. He very much had an idea of stereo-ness for the amp at the outset of it. He talked early on about miking both speakers and panning them—he wanted to be able to do sort of startling things with each speaker’s content.
I think my role was to take the stuff that he wanted to do and figure out how we could do it. So, the stereo-ness of the amp, the 10" speaker versus the 15" speaker, the routing stuff you could do where the reverb goes to one speaker or both, all that stuff came from Jack.
Jack’s Vibrasonic was a touchstone for the Pano Verb.
Cotey: That amp lived with me for quite a while. He knew that he liked the harmonic tremolo.
The stereo harmonic tremolo, that’s a fairly part-intensive circuit, even in a normal brown amp. In this amp, there’s two full circuits in it, so it is literally double the parts of one of the more complicated earlier ’60s amps, just for that part of the amp. I worked out how that works. That’s two harmonic tremolos that are in sync, but opposite polarity. So, when one’s going up, the other is going down, and vice versa.
Stan Cotey is Fender’s Vice President of Guitar Research and Development and worked with White to design the prototypes for the Pano Verb.
The reverb mix on the Pano Verb is rooted in some vintage designs, but it’s handled a little differently here.
Cotey: In the video, he talked about the reverb tank in front of the amp, which forms the Vibro-King, and that he liked the idea. I think he liked the idea of having a more comprehensive, dedicated reverb circuit in an amp, not where it’s just kind of spread on the top, like margarine or something.
In a traditional Fender amp, there’s a feed that comes off the preamp circuit that goes to a driver, which is a tube and a little transformer, and that drives the reverb tank. Then, the output of the reverb tank goes into a recovery amp, a little gain stage with a tube, and that gets mixed with the output of the channel and shoved into the power amp. So, the reverb kind of occurs between the preamp and the power amp. It largely takes the tonality of the preamp on because the tone controls are upstream of it.
Jack has an old Fender amp from the early ’60s that had reverb added. I don’t know who modified it, but they actually used the second channel of the amp as the reverb return, which I think is really super clever. Then you get tone controls for the reverb. So that’s where that idea came from. He didn’t necessarily want the reverb circuit in front. He liked it between the preamp and the power amp, but he wanted to have it be more comprehensive than what would be on a typical mid-’60s Fender amplifier.
What was the most exciting feature for you to create?
The stereo harmonic tremolo was really fun, and the journey that we went on to get there was really cool. I have a tweed amp from the late ’50s from Guild that has tremolo in it, and it’s a stereo amp. It has two separate everythings. The tremolo only works on one side, and that gives the apparent sound that it’s kind of going back and forth between the speakers. We tried having just the harmonic tremolo on one side of this, and it really wanted to have two complete full circuits. So that was one of the changes that got made.
Getting the power amps to work well together was fun too. That was more about transformer and tube selection and working the power supply parts out, getting the amps where they would distort in the right way at the right times or right level. But the harmonic tremolo was definitely the elephant dancing on the bucket with the streamers going off.