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Watch this pianist-turned-guitarist intertwine the styles of Eddie Van Halen and Andy McKee, with 10-finger orchestrations tapped out on his Les Paul Axcess, enlivened by a flexible Friedman BE-100 and a healthy pedalboard. His rig helps him build many moods, from melodious to morose.
“I grew up wanting to be Eddie Van Halen and Randy Rhoads, but over time I’ve found my own dark and aggressive style. These days, my dream as a musician is to make people feel as connected to the cosmos as I feel when I play the guitar,” wishes guitarist Sammy Boller.
Sammy Boller has been playing guitar most of his life. He played in high school orchestra and even attended University of Michigan’s School of Music, Theatre & Dance. In 2012, his life forever changed when he won Guitar Center’s “Master Satriani” competition. (Watch his submission for “Satch Boogie” here.)
Catapulting off that success, the next year Boller joined Detroit rockers Citizen Zero. The band released their 2016 debut LP, State of Mind, and its lead single “Go (Let Me Save You)” climbed to #17 on Billboard’s mainstream rock chart.
But even with Citizen Zero’s success, Boller wasn’t sending listeners into the stratosphere feeling one with the stardust. Then while shopping his instrumental solo work, he quickly earned a fan in CandyRat Records owner Rob Poland who signed Sammy. (CandyRat was started by Poland in 2004 and began working with Don Ross, Andy McKee, Antoine Dufourto. Boller released his debut solo album and an additional standalone single—Kingdom of the Sun and “Path of the Heart”—in 2020 that snake between Sunset shred and post-rock melodies. The next year was celebrated with Boller’s stunning third release “Ritual Lights” showing Sammy’s first (solo) recorded run in with the wah wah. (Something you’ll now see on his pedalboard later.) He’s since dropped a pair of singles “Spellbound” and “Midnight Garden” that grow off his enchanting formula and adds in heightened technical abilities and deeper rhythmic grooves.
Before his headlining show at Nashville’s Bowery Vault, the fretboard maestro shows off a pair of versatile guitars, explains why the chase for his pinnacle amp is over, and details and demos the select stompboxes that send his sound into the asteroid belt.
[Brought to you by D’Addario Strings & XPND Pedalboard.]
Les Paul, More Axcess
Sammy Boller scored this Gibson Les Paul Axcess Custom—his main cruiser since he was 20—on an eBay safari. It’s completely stock to him except he flipped the pickups for a set of Motor City Pickups with a HotHead (bridge) and Afwayu (neck). Both pickups are coil-tapped so when Boller needs a different tone for tapping or less aggression, it’s there with a pull of a knob. His previous band, Citizen Zero, often performed in drop-D tuning, so he added an EVH D-Tuna to his Floyd Rose. The floating tremolo has been blocked off for tuning stability. And for his solo stuff, he typically plays a half-step down and always uses Elixir Strings 12052 Nanoweb (.10-.46).
Soul of the World
On the top side of his Les Paul, he etched in an inspirational reminder.
No Holds Barred
The second steed in his svelte setup is this Friedman NoHo 24 that Boller fell in love with years ago at NAMM. Not a fan of “new” guitars, Boller had the Friedman team take the pristine, flame-maple-topped NoHo and gave it the company’s “vintage” touch seen on other models in their lineup. The “super strat” still has been upgraded with the same pickups as the Axcess— HotHead (bridge) and Afwayu (neck)—and the 24-fret guitar features a compact 24.75" scale length.
Excalibur
“I think I tried every amp out there,” jokes Boller. “But as soon as I plugged into one of these, I was like, ‘I’m done!’” The Friedman BE-100 has been his go-to amp for over seven years. The amp’s lively, supercharged plexi tone matched with modern appointments (three channels, effects loop, toggles for voice, bright, and cln-be-hbe) makes it a Swiss Army knife for Boller. Underneath the head, is a checkered Friedman 100-watt 4x12 cab outfitted with a pair of Celestion Vintage 30s and a couple of Celestion Creamback 25s.
Sammy Boller's Pedalboard
In front of the Musicomlab EFX MK-V Audio Controller, Boller has routed his Shure GLXD16+ digital wireless pedalboard unit, Korg Pitchblack Tuner, MXR EVH Phase 90, Empress Compressor (to lift his clean tapping parts), Dunlop CBM95 Cry Baby Mini Wah, and ISP Technologies Decimator II G-String that has two signals before and in the effects loop. The three other pedals in the BE-100’s effects loop are an Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail, MXR Carbon Copy, and a TC Electronic Flashback X4. Everything rides on the Friedman Tour Pro 1529 Platinum pedalboard.
Shop Sammy Boller's Rig
Gibson Les Paul Axcess Custom
Friedman BE-100 Deluxe
Friedman 412 Checkered 100-watt 4x12" Extension Cabinet
Celestion Vintage 30s
Celestion Creamback 25s
Shure GLXD16+ Digital Wireless Guitar Pedal System
Korg Pitchblack Tuner
MXR EVH Phase 90
Empress Compressor
ISP Technologies Decimator II G-String
Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail
MXR Carbon Copy
TC Electronic Flashback X4
Friedman Tour Pro 1529 Platinum Pack 15-inch x 29-inch Pedalboard
Elixir Strings 12052 Nanoweb (.10 .46)
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Stevie Van Zandt with “Number One,” the ’80s reissue Stratocaster—with custom paisley pickguard from luthier Dave Petillo—that he’s been playing for the last quarter century or so.
There’s a life-size cameo of a go-go dancer in banana yellow; she’s frozen in mid hip shimmy. One wall displays rock posters and B-movie key art, anchored by a 3D rendering of Cream’s Disraeli Gearsalbum cover that swishes and undulates as you walk past it. Van Zandt’s shelves are stuffed with countless DVDs, from Louis Prima to the J. Geils Band performing on the German TV concert seriesRockpalast. There are three copies ofIggy and the Stooges: Live in Detroit. Videos of the great ’60s-music TV showcases, from Hullabaloo to Dean Martin’s The Hollywood Palace, sit here. Hundreds of books about rock ’n’ roll, from Greil Marcus’s entire output to Nicholas Schaffner’s seminal tome, The Beatles Forever, form a library in the next room.
But I haven’t seen this yet because the elevator is dead, and I am in it. Our trap is tiny, about 5' by 5'. A dolly filled with television production equipment is beside me. There’s a production assistant whom I’ve never met until this morning and another person who’s brand new to me, too, Geoff Sanoff. It turns out that he’s Van Zandt’s engineer—the guy who runs this studio. And as I’ll discover shortly, he’s also one of the several sentinels who watch over Stevie Van Zandt’s guitars.
There’s nothing to do now but wait for the NYFD, so Sanoff and I get acquainted. We discover we’re both from D.C. and know some of the same people in Washington’s music scene. We talk about gear. We talk about this television project. I’m here today assisting an old pal, director Erik Nelson, best known for producing Werner Herzog’s most popular documentaries, like Grizzly Man and Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Van Zandt has agreed to participate in a television pilot about the British Invasion. After about half an hour, the elevator doors suddenly slide open, and we’re rescued, standing face-to-face with three New York City firefighters.
As our camera team sets up the gear, Sanoff beckons me to a closet off the studio’s control room. I get the sense I am about to get a consolation prize for standing trapped in an elevator for the last 30 minutes. He pulls a guitar case off the shelf—it’s stenciled in paint with the words “Little Steven” on its top—snaps open the latches, and instantly I am face to face with Van Zandt’s well-worn 1957 Stratocaster. Sanoff hands it to me, and I’m suddenly holding what may as well be the thunderbolt of Zeus for an E Street Band fan. My jaw drops when he lets me plug it in so he can get some levels on his board, and the clean, snappy quack of the nearly 70-year-old pickups fills the studio. For decades, Springsteen nuts have enjoyed a legendary 1978 filmed performance of “Rosalita” from Phoenix, Arizona, that now lives on YouTube. This is the Stratocaster Van Zandt had slung over his shoulder that night. It’s the same guitar he wields in the famous No Nukes concert film shot at Madison Square Garden a year later, in 1979. My mind races. The British Invasion is all well and essential. But now I’m thinking about Van Zandt’s relationship with his guitars.
Stevie Van Zandt's Gear
Van Zandt’s guitar concierge Andy Babiuk helped him plunge deeper down the Rickenbacker rabbit hole. Currently, Van Zandt has six Rickenbackers backstage: two 6-strings and four 12-strings.
Guitars
- 1957 Fender Stratocaster (studio only)
- ’80s Fender ’57 Stratocaster reissue “Number One”
- Gretsch Tennessean
- 1955 Gibson Les Paul Custom “Black Beauty” (studio only)
- Rickenbacker Fab Gear 2024 Limited Edition ’60s Style 360 Model (candy apple green)
- Rickenbacker Fab Gear 2023 Limited Edition ’60s Style 360 Model (snowglo)
- Rickenbacker 2018 Limited Edition ’60s Style 360 Fab Gear (jetglo)
- Two Rickenbacker 1993Plus 12-strings (candy apple purple and SVZ blue)
- Rickenbacker 360/12C63 12-string (fireglo)
- Vox Teardrop (owned by Andy Babiuk)
Amps
- Two Vox AC30s
- Two Vox 2x12 cabinets
Effects
- Boss Space Echo
- Boss Tremolo
- Boss Rotary Ensemble
- Durham Electronics Sex Drive
- Durham Electronics Mucho Busto
- Durham Electronics Zia Drive
- Electro-Harmonix Satisfaction
- Ibanez Tube Screamer
- Voodoo Labs Ground Control Pro switcher
Strings and Picks
- D’Addario (.095–.44)
- D’Andrea Heavy
Van Zandt has reached a stage of reflection in his career. Besides the Grammy-nominated HBO film, Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple, which came out in 2024, he recently wrote and published his autobiography, Unrequited Infatuations (2021), a rollicking read in which he pulls no punches and makes clear he still strives to do meaningful things in music and life.
His laurels would weigh him down if they were actually wrapped around his neck. In the E Street Band, Van Zandt has participated in arguably the most incredible live group in rock ’n’ roll history. And don’t forget Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes or Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul. He created both the Underground Garage and Outlaw Country radio channels on Sirius/XM. He started a music curriculum program called TeachRock that provides no-cost resources and other programs to schools across the country. Then there’s the politics. Via his 1985 record, Sun City, Van Zandt is credited with blasting many of the load-bearing bricks that brought the walls of South African apartheid tumbling into dust. He also acted in arguably the greatest television drama in American history, with his turn as Silvio Dante in The Sopranos.
Puzzlingly, Van Zandt’s autobiography lacks any detail on his relationship with the electric guitar. And Sanoff warns me that Van Zandt is “not a gearhead.” Instead he has an organization in place to keep his guitar life spinning like plates on the end of pointed sticks. Besides Sanoff, there are three others: Ben Newberry has been Van Zandt’s guitar tech since the beginning of 1982. Andy Babiuk, owner of Rochester, New York, guitar shop Fab Gear and author of essential collector reference books Beatles Gear and Rolling Stones Gear (the latter co-authored by Greg Prevost) functions as Van Zandt’s guitar concierge. Lastly, luthier Dave Petillo, based in Asbury Park, New Jersey, oversees all the maintenance and customization on Van Zandt’s axes.
“I took one lesson, and they start to teach you the notes. I don’t care about the notes.” —Stevie Van Zandt
I crawl onto Zoom with Van Zandt for a marathon session and come away from our 90 minutes with the sense that he is a man of dichotomies. Sure, he’s a guitar slinger, but he considers his biggest strengths to be as an arranger, producer, and songwriter. “I don’t feel that being a guitar player is my identity,” he tells me. “For 40 years, ever since I made my first solo record, I just have not felt that I express myself as a guitar player. I still enjoy it when I do it; I’m not ambivalent. When I play a solo, I am in all the way, and I play a solo like I would like to hear if I were in the audience. But the guitar part is really part of the song’s arrangement. And a great solo is a composed solo. Great solos are ones you can sing, like Jimi Hendrix’s solo in ‘All Along the Watchtower.’”
In his autobiography, Van Zandt mentions that his first guitar was an acoustic belonging to his grandfather. “I took one lesson, and they start to teach you the notes. I don’t care about the notes,” Van Zandt tells me. “The teacher said I had natural ability. I’m thinking, if I got natural ability, then what the fuck do I need you for? So I never went back. After that, I got my first electric, an Epiphone. It was about slowing down the records to figure out with my ear what they were doing. It was seeing live bands and standing in front of that guitar player and watching what they were doing. It was praying when a band went on TV that the cameraman would occasionally go to the right place and show what the guitar player was doing instead of putting the camera on the lead singer all the time. And I’m sure it was the same for everybody. There was no concept of rock ’n’ roll lessons. School of Rock wouldn’t exist for another 30 years. So, you had to go to school yourself.”
By the end of the 1960s, Van Zandt tells me he had made a conscious decision about what kind of player he wanted to be. “I realized that I really wasn’t that interested in becoming a virtuoso guitar player, per se. I was more interested in making sure I could play the guitar solo that would complement the song. I got more into the songs than the nature of musicianship.”
After the Beatles and the Stones broke the British Invasion wide open, bands like Cream and the Yardbirds most influenced him. “George Harrison would have that perfect 22-second guitar solo,” Van Zandt remembers. “Keith Richards. Dave Davies. Then, the harder stuff started coming. Jeff Beck in the Yardbirds. Eric Clapton with things like ‘White Room.’ But the songs stayed in a pop configuration, three minutes each or so. You’d have this cool guitar-based song with a 15-second, really amazing Jeff Beck solo in it. That’s what I liked. Later, the jam bands came, but I was not into that. My attention deficit disorder was not working for the longer solos,” he jokes. Watch a YouTube video of any recent E Street Band performance where Van Zandt solos, and the punch and impact of his approach and attack are apparent. At Nationals Park in Washington, D.C., last year, his solo on “Rosalita” was 13 powerful seconds.
Van Zandt and Bruce Springsteen’s relationship goes back to their earliest days on the Jersey shore. “Everybody had a different guitar; your guitar was your identity,” recalls Van Zandt. “At some point, a couple of years later, I remember Bruce calling me and asking me for my permission to switch to Telecaster. At that point, I was ready to switch to Stratocaster.”
Photo by Pamela Springsteen
Van Zandt left his Epiphone behind for his first Fender. “I started to notice that the guitar superstars at the time were playing Telecasters. Mike Bloomfield. Jeff Beck. Even Eric Clapton played one for a while,” he tells me. “I went down to Jack’s Music Shop in Red Bank, New Jersey, because he had the first Telecaster in our area and couldn’t sell it; it was just sitting there. I bought it for 90 bucks.”
In those days, and around those parts, players only had one guitar. Van Zandt recalls, “Everybody had a different guitar; your guitar was your identity. At some point, a couple of years later, I remember Bruce calling me and asking me for my permission to switch to Telecaster. At that point, I was ready to switch to Stratocaster, because Jimi Hendrix had come in and Jeff Beck had switched to a Strat. They all kind of went from Telecaster to Les Pauls. And then some of them went on to the Stratocaster. For me, the Les Paul was just too out of reach. It was too expensive, and it was just too heavy. So I said, I’m going to switch to a Stratocaster. It felt a little bit more versatile.”
Van Zandt still employs Stratocasters, and besides the 1957 I strummed, he was seen with several throughout the ’80s and ’90s. But for the last 20 or 25 years, Van Zandt has mainly wielded a black Fender ’57 Strat reissue from the ’80s with a maple fretboard and a gray pearloid pickguard. He still uses that Strat—dubbed “Number One”—but the pickguard has been switched to one sporting a purple paisley pattern that was custom-made by Dave Petillo.
Petillo comes from New Jersey luthier royalty and followed in the footsteps of his late father, Phil Petillo. At a young age, the elder Petillo became an apprentice to legendary New York builder John D’Angelico. Later, he sold Bruce Springsteen the iconic Fender Esquire that’s seen on the Born to Run album cover and maintained and modified that guitar and all of Bruce’s other axes until he passed away in 2010. Phil worked out of a studio in the basement of their home, not far from Asbury Park. Artists dropped in, and Petillo has childhood memories of playing pick-up basketball games in his backyard with members of the E Street Band. (He also recalls showing his Lincoln Logs to Johnny Cash and once mistaking Jerry Garcia for Santa Claus.)
“I was more interested in making sure I could play the guitar solo that would complement the song. I got more into the songs than the nature of musicianship.” —Stevie Van Zandt
“I’ve known Stevie Van Zandt my whole life,” says Petillo. “My dad used to work on his 1957 Strat. That guitar today has updated tuners, a bone nut, new string trees, and a refret that was done by Dad long ago. I think one volume pot may have been changed. But it still has the original pickups.” Petillo is responsible for a lot of the aesthetic flair seen on Van Zandt’s instruments. He continues, “Stevie is so much fun to work with. I love incorporating colors into things, and Stevie gets that. When you talk to a traditional Telecaster or Strat player, and you say, ‘I want to do a tulip paisley pickguard in neon blue-green,’ they’re like, ‘Holy cow, that’s too much!’ But for Stevie, it’s just natural. So I always text him with pickguard designs, asking him, ‘Which one do you like?’ And he calls me a wild man; he says, ‘I don’t have that many Strats to put them on!’ But I’ll go to Ben Newberry and say, ‘Ben, I made these pickguards; let’s get them on the guitar. And I’ll go backstage, and we’ll put them on. I just love that relationship; Stevie is down for it.”
Petillo takes care of the electronics on Van Zandt’s guitars. Almost all of the Strats are modified with an internal Alembic Stratoblaster preamp circuit, which Van Zandt can physically toggle on and off using a switch housed just above the input jack. Van Zandt tells me, “That came because I got annoyed with the whole pedal thing. I’m a performer onstage, and I’m integrated with the audience and I like the freedom to move. And if I’m across the stage and all of a sudden Bruce nods to me to take a solo, or there’s a bit in the song that requires a little bit of distortion, it’s just easier to have that; sometimes, I’ll need that extra little boost for a part I’m throwing in, and it’s convenient.”
In recent times, Van Zandt has branched out from the Stratocaster, which has a lot to do with Andy Babiuk's influence. The two met 20 years ago, and Babiuk’s band, the Chesterfield Kings, is on Van Zandt’s Wicked Cool Records. “He’d call me up and ask me things like, ‘What’s Brian Jones using on this song?’” explains Babiuk. “When I’d ask him why, he’d tell me, ‘Because I want to have that guitar.’ It’s a common thing for me to get calls and texts from him like that. And there’s something many people overlook that Stevie doesn’t advertise: He’s a ripping guitar player. People think of him as playing chords and singing backup for Bruce, but the guy rips. And not just on guitar, on multiple instruments.”
Van Zandt tells me he wanted to bring more 12-string to the E Street Band this tour, “just to kind of differentiate the tone.” He explains, “Nils is doing his thing, and Bruce is doing his thing, and I wanted to do more 12-string.” He laughs, “I went full Paul Kantner!” Babiuk helped Van Zandt plunge deeper down the Rickenbacker rabbit hole. Currently, Van Zandt has six Rickenbackers backstage: two 6-strings and four 12-strings. Each 12-string has a modified nut made by Petillo from ancient woolly mammoth tusk, and the D, A, and low E strings are inverted with their octave.
Van Zandt explains this to me: “I find that the strings ring better when the high ones are on top. I’m not sure if that’s how Roger McGuinn did it, but it works for me. I’m also playing a wider neck.”
Babiuk tells me about a unique Rick in Van Zandt’s rack of axes: “I know the guys at Rickenbacker well, and they did a run of 30 basses in candy apple purple for my shop. I showed one to Stevie, and purple is his color; he loves it. He asked me to get him a 12-string in the same color, and I told him, ‘They don’t do one-offs; they don’t have a custom shop,’ but it’s hard to say no to the guy! So I called Rickenbacker and talked them into it. I explained, ‘He’ll play it a lot on this upcoming tour.’ They made him a beautiful one with his OM logo.”
The purple one-off is a 1993Plus model and sports a 1 3/4" wide neck—1/8" wider than a normal Rickenbacker. Van Zandt loved it so much that he had Babiuk wrestle with Rickenbacker again to build another one in baby blue. Petillo has since outfitted them with paisley-festooned custom pickguards. When guitar tech Newberry shows me these unique axes backstage, I can see the input jack on the purple guitar is labeled with serial number 01001.
“Some of my drive is based on gratitude,” says Van Zandt, “feeling like we are the luckiest guys in the luckiest generation ever.”
Photo by Rob DeMartin
Van Zandt also currently plays a white Vox Teardrop. That guitar is a prototype owned by Babiuk. “Stevie wanted a Teardrop,” Babiuk tells me, “but I explained that the vintage ones are hit and miss—the ones made in the U.K. were often better than the ones manufactured in Italy. Korg now owns Vox, and I have a new Teardrop prototype from them in my personal collection. When I showed it to him, he loved it and asked me to get him one. I had to tell him, ‘I can’t; it’s a prototype, there’s only one,’ and he asked me to sell him mine,” he chuckles. “I told him, ‘It’s my fucking personal guitar, it’s not for sale!’ So I ended up lending it to him for this tour, and I told him, ‘Remember, this is my guitar; don’t get too happy with it, okay?’
“He asked me why that particular guitar sounds and feels so good. Besides being a prototype built by only one guy, the single-coil pickups’ output is abnormally hot, and the neck feels like a nice ’60s Fender neck. Stevie’s obviously a dear friend of mine, and he can hold onto it for as long as he wants. I’m glad it’s getting played. It was just hanging in my office.”
Van Zandt tells me how Babiuk’s Vox Teardrop sums up everything he wants from his tone, and says, “It’s got a wonderfully clean, powerful sound. Like Brian Jones got on ‘The Last Time.’ That’s my whole thing; that’s the trick—trying to get the power without too much distortion. Bruce and Nils get plenty of distortion; I am trying to be the clean rhythm guitar all the time.”
If Van Zandt has a consigliere like Tony Soprano had Silvio Dante, that’s Newberry. Newberry has tech’d nearly every gig with Van Zandt since 1982. “Bruce shows move fast,” he tells me. “So when there’s a guitar change for Stevie, and there are many of them, I’m at the top of the stairs, and we switch quickly. There’s maybe one or two seconds, and if he needs to tell me something, I hear it. He’s Bruce’s musical director, so he may say something like, ‘Remind me tomorrow to go over the background vocals on “Ghosts,”’ or something like that. And I take notes during the show.”
“Everybody had a different guitar; your guitar was your identity. At some point, a couple of years later, I remember Bruce calling me and asking me for my permission to switch to a Telecaster.” —Stevie Van Zandt
When I ask Newberry how he defines Van Zandt’s relationship to the guitar, he doesn’t hesitate, snapping back, “It’s all in his head. His playing is encyclopedic, whether it’s Bruce or anything else. He may show up at soundcheck and start playing the Byrds, but it’s not ‘Tambourine Man,’ it’s something obscure like ‘Bells of Rhymney.’ People may not get it, but I’ve known him long enough to know what’s happening. He’s got everything already under his fingers. Everything.”
As such, Van Zandt says he never practices. “The only time I touch a guitar between tours is if I’m writing something or maybe arranging backing vocal harmonies on a production,” he tells me.
Before we say goodbye, I tell Van Zandt about my time stuck in his elevator, and his broad grin signals that I may not be the only one to have suffered that particular purgatory. When I ask him about the 1957 Stratocaster I got to play upon my release, he recalls: “Bruce Springsteen gave me that guitar. I’ve only ever had one guitar stolen in my life, and it was in the very early days of my joining the E Street Band. I only joined temporarily for what I thought would be about seven gigs, and in those two weeks or so, my Stratocaster was stolen. It was a 1957 or 1958. Bruce felt bad about that and replaced that lost guitar with this one. So I’ve had it a long, long time. Once that first one was stolen, I decided I would resist having a personal relationship with any one guitar. But that one being a gift from Bruce makes it special. I will never take it back on the road.”
After 50 years of rock ’n’ roll, if there is one word to sum up Stevie Van Zandt, it may be “restless”—an adjective you sense from reading his autobiography. He gets serious and tells me, “I’m always trying to catch up. The beginning of accomplishing something came quite late to me. I feel like I haven’t done nearly enough. What are we on this planet trying to do?” he asks rhetorically. “We’re trying to realize our potential and maybe leave this place one percent better for the next guy. And some of my drive is based on gratitude, feeling like we are the luckiest guys in the luckiest generation ever. That’s what I’m doing: I want to give something back. I feel an obligation.”
YouTube It
“Rosalita” is a perennial E Street Band showstopper. Here’s a close-up video from Philadelphia’s Citizens Bank Park last summer. Van Zandt’s brief but commanding guitar spotlight shines just past the 4:30 mark.
At home in the shop at Gibson USA, where DeCola is R&D manager and master luthier.
Jim DeCola paid for his first guitar with his nose.
“When the first wave came, it scooped us all up, and I was tumbling under and something hit me bad,” he recounts. “So, I’m in a daze, and my sister runs up to me and says, ‘Oh my god, you have a bloody nose!’” When DeCola looked in the bathroom mirror, his nose was broken and the skin was split. The surf park’s medic sent him to a hospital. “Whatever the bill is, give it to us and we’ll double it,” DeCola recalls being told. “Just please don’t sue.” When a check for $880 arrived, his mother suggested he use it to buy the electric guitar he was pining for. “I ended up with a Gibson SG, because George Harrison had one, but they didn’t have a cherry red one, so mine was ebony.” He also got a Roland Cube practice amp because it had a master volume. “I still have both, and it’s still a great little amp and a great guitar. And that,” he says, “set me on my course.”
It’s been an epic journey in guitar creation: from his apprenticeship at a Lansing, Illinois, shop—which led to a dramatic and well-chronicled bridge fix for Randy Rhoads—to his years with Peavey, Fender, and now Gibson, where he is R&D manager and master luthier. DeCola blanches a bit at the master luthier title, observing that he’d prefer, simply, “guitar guy,” but that’s like calling a tiger a cat. DeCola is an apex builder. Instruments he designed are world-renowned and he’s collaborated with an enviable list of greats that includes Eddie Van Halen, Paul McCartney, Slash, Adrian Vandenberg, Rudy Sarzo, Neil Schon, and Randy Jackson.
Jim DeCola at the Gibson USA offices in Nashville. He spearheaded the company’s current two-pronged product orientation, with original and modern instrument lines.
Photo by Ted Drozdowski
In the Beginning…
DeCola’s family was musical. His dad played many instruments but trumpet was his main squeeze, and his older brother and sister exposed Jim to the Beatles, Stones, Hendrix, Cream, and other deities of the ’60s guitar-rock canon. Thus fueled, at 15, in his second year of wood shop, he decided to build a guitar. Inspired by a photo of Scorpions’ Matthias Jabs, he settled on an Explorer body shape. A friend who already played guitar detailed where the bridge needed to go and what parts were required, and DeCola reverse engineered from there. He even cut the pickguard from a sheet of gray smoke Mirrorplex. But despite two years of electronics classes, he opted to bring his creation to the Music Lab, that guitar shop in Lansing, where he was taking lessons, for the wiring.
“The guy who did repairs wired it up for me, and when it was ready he called and said, ‘Hey, I want to talk with you when you come in,’ ” DeCola recounts. “He asked me to apprentice with him. It was learn while you earn, and while I did learn some stuff from him, really, I was wet sanding guitars and doing that kind of grunt work.” DeCola was at Music Lab part-time for 18 months, and graduated from high school just as the tech left. The owners of the store asked Jim to take over, and, as Suetonius told Caesar, the die was cast.
In January ’82, a caller made DeCola think he was being pranked—until he became convinced it really was Randy Rhoads and Rudy Sarzo’s tech Pete Morton. They explained that Bruce Bolen, then at Chicago Musical Instruments, had suggested him to fix Rhoads guitar in time for the night’s Ozzy Osbourne performance. DeCola grabbed his tools and drove through the snow for 50 miles to the Rosemont Horizon arena, where Rhoads was having trouble keeping the vibrato bridge on his polka-dot Sandoval custom V in tune. After a quick round of introductions, DeCola took apart the vibrato bridge and used a technique inspired by G&L guitars, deleting two of its bridge’s four screws and cutting a pivot with a V-file to countersink the bridge plate. Next, he was treated to a soundcheck of “Mr. Crowley” by Rhoads, Sarzo, and drummer Tommy Aldridge. As the opening act played, Rhoads asked DeCola to make the vibrato “a little slinkier,” and he completed the mod just before Ozzy’s downbeat. DeCola—still in his teens—was standing just off to the side when the iconic photo of Ozzy carrying Rhoads that appeared on the cover of the 1987-released Tributealbum was taken.
Six years later, DeCola received offers from Kahler and Peavey, and he opted to relocate to Meridian, Mississippi, to work with Hartley Peavey as his R&D tech. “I learned a lot,” he reflects. “Hartley was a great mentor. At any time, I’d have a stack of books and magazines, or just single pages ripped from magazines, a foot high on my desk, and he’d expect me to read and give him a report on everything,” says DeCola. “Sometimes it was related to guitars, amps, and effects; sometimes it might be antique radios.” After a few years, DeCola was promoted to supervisor of guitar engineering and began designing instruments. DeCola minted some of Peavey’s most lauded guitars, including the Tele-like Generation, with dual humbuckers, a mahogany body and neck, and a 5-way switch. That guitar gave the company a toehold in the country music market, but was also embraced by Steve Cropper and Dave Edmunds.
“We looked at each other and said, ‘The decade of the “superstrat” is over.’”
Every Best Les Paul Sound
Another pivotal experience during his years at Peavey happened at a summer NAMM show in Chicago’s McCormick Place, when a celestial Les Paul tone suddenly emerged from the exhibition hall’s PA system. “It was ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ by Guns N’ Roses,” says DeCola, “and we’re looking up thinking, ‘Who the hell is this?’ It was every best Les Paul sound wrapped up into one. We looked at each other and said, ‘The decade of the “superstrat” is over.’ And it really was.”
That inspired DeCola to create the Les Paul-Tele-style hybrid Peavey Odyssey. He also worked with Adrian Vandenberg on set-neck and neck-through versions of the Dutch guitarist’s signature models, and a host of other artists—including Eddie Van Halen. Peavey’s artist relations head heard that Van Halen had a falling out with Ernie Ball Music Man and sensed opportunity. DeCola quickly made a prototype inspired by Eddie’s EBMM signature model and took it to a gig in Florida, where the band was kicking off the Balance tour. “Eddie rehearsed with it and said, ‘Okay, now I know you can do it; let’s come up with a design.’”
During the development process, DeCola learned that Eddie’s son Wolfgang had a birthday coming. So, as a gift for Wolfie, he decided to make a 3/4-size example of his signature concept for Eddie. Mid-build, Eddie made a surprise visit to Meridian. DeCola invited EVH into his office and showed him Wolfie’s guitar.
“I thought this would be the direction we’d use for your new model,” DeCola explained. “He said, ‘Yeah, I love it! Just make it full size, then.’ And for the headstock, Eddie had done some napkin drawings in the hotel that were like Flying V’s, but smaller.” That wouldn’t work, thanks to the U.S. Patent Office. More ideas were exchanged. DeCola was coincidentally working on a new build for himself at the time, with a three-to-a-side headstock. He painted that headstock black, and then sanded a scoop in its tip. And that was it. Eddie was happy. DeCola wanted to get a prototype into Van Halen’s hands as quickly as possible, so when he found out the virtuoso was leaving Meridian the next day after lunch, he worked through the night.
“When he showed up the next morning at 11 a.m., I was just tuning it up,” DeCola recalls. “It was raw wood, but he played it and said, ‘That’s it.’” Thus, the Peavey EVH Wolfgang was born. “After that, the engineering took longer than making the guitar, because I had to do the blueprints and totally spec out everything,” DeCola adds.
Another important encounter he had in Meridian was with the blues historian and record collector Gayle Dean Wardlow, noted for, among other things, finding the death certificate of Robert Johnson. After they met, DeCola started going to Wardlow’s home weekly to talk about the roots of the genre he’d begun studying as a young player, listen to rare old 78s, and absorb the techniques preserved in their shellac. That study paid off. Hearing DeCola play metal-bodied resonator guitar is a high-order experience, although he also sounds terrific rocking the hell out on a Les Paul. DeCola is humble about his playing, but, really, he doesn’t need to be. “It’s a great release, and great therapy,” he says.
DeCola’s tenure at Peavey ran its course. “I was making P-90 and 12-string versions of existing guitars, a 12-string baritone … and they were turning my operation into a custom shop, which I didn’t want to do, because that’s just low-volume manufacturing. I wanted to stick with designing new stuff,” he says. “I wanted a change. It was five years with a lot of pressure. I wasn’t getting credit for designing and building Eddie Van Halen’s guitars. So, I went to Fender in Nashville, who had what they called the Custom Shop East at the time.”
“Musicians and skaters have the same kind of soul, the same mindset,” DeCola says. “It is something you can do by yourself, as a form of expression, but when you’ve got your crew and you’re skating, it’s like being with your band.”
Photo courtesy of Jim DeCola
“I came up with the idea of teaching people how to use things that every guitar player is going to have around the house for tools—coins or picks—and MacGyver their instruments.”
On to Gibson
There, he worked with Bruce Bolen and pickup guru Tim Shaw. But after Bolen retired in 2011 and Fender decided to close that Nashville location, DeCola found out about openings at Gibson and applied. In June, he was hired as master luthier.
“Gibson’s been a great ride,” DeCola attests. Although it hasn’t always been easy. When DeCola came onboard, the notoriously controlling, sometimes-volatile Henry Juszkiewicz was CEO. “It was fine for me, because Henry respected me, but it was an environment where I felt I had to be measured in my responses,” he says. There were also notorious design gaffes, like “robot tuners” and the dreadful Firebird X—both pet projects of Juszkiewicz that almost literally no one else, especially customers, desired.
“I got blamed for some of that stuff, but I was just the messenger,” DeCola says. But as James Curleigh and, now, Cesar Gueikian took over Gibson’s leadership, DeCola had an opportunity to proactively get his thoughts on the direction for the company’s products before more receptive CEOs.
“I made a bullet list and at one point had maybe 40 things on there, like going back to a thin binding on certain models and changing features,” he relates. “But my main message was, ‘Give the people what they want; we’re not here to dictate what people want.’” Many of DeCola’s ideas were manifested in the roster of guitars at the Gibson display at NAMM 2019—instruments that honored and built upon the company’s legacy. DeCola also had the idea of splitting Gibson’s model line into original and modern categories. “My concept was, we have the original models, which we’re determined to improve, and the modern line where we could have locking tuners, push-pull pots, and blueberry burst finishes—features that aren’t rooted in the golden years of the ’50s.”
Gueikian embraced that practice for Gibson USA and the Custom Shop, and expanded it to the acoustic Custom Shop in Bozeman, Montana, and to the Mesa/Boogie amp line. But DeCola was already on the case with amplification. Before Curleigh stepped down, he’d asked DeCola to look at Gibson’s amp line, and, again, DeCola looked back andforward at once. Inspired by his personal collection of vintage Gibson amps, he mapped out a new product line for 10-, 20-, and 40-watters. “I based my thinking off the greatest hits of those classic amps, and focused on the Falcon, because I have a ’62 Falcon, and when I looked into its history, the revelation was that it was the first amp with both reverb and tremolo,” he says. “So, I thought that would be a cool amp to make.” Then Gibson bought Mesa/Boogie under Gueikian’s stewardship, and the project went to that company’s Randall Smith, who created a stellar original design. Gibson unveiled the power-switching Falcon 5 (which won PG’s coveted Premier Gear Award) and Falcon 20 in January 2024.
DeCola is skilled in every aspect of guitar building, including working in the spray shop, where he is seen here training the gun on a model year 2024 blueberry burst Les Paul Studio.
Photo courtesy of Gibson
Mr. Fix-It
While the profile of most people in the guitar industry went down during the pandemic, DeCola’s went up thanks to a series of how-to videos he made for Gibson’s YouTube channel. They cover such topics as how to adjust action and pickup height, and how to do a proper setup. “I wanted to do something for the guitar community when things were shut down, so I came up with the idea of teaching people how to use things that every guitar player is going to have around the house for tools—coins or picks—and MacGyver their instruments,” he says. These videos have hundreds of thousands of views, and have given him a kind of celebrity status that’s rare among luthiers.
When asked what makes a great guitar, including the signature models he’s worked on at Gibson for Paul McCartney, Slash, and others, DeCola talks about achieving a commonsense, holistic balance of design, materials, and craftsmanship. He adds that there is no shortage of fine instruments now available, and that, moving ahead, he sees the kind of balance between tradition and invention that he has promoted at Gibson remaining its norm. “There are a lot of boutique builders and trends like 7- and 8-string guitars, fanned frets, and different scale lengths today,” he notes. “Some of it can be cyclical. There was a period in the ’80s and ’90s, for example, when a lot of people were adopting 7-strings, and now I see a lot of them again.
“Gibson was built on innovation,” he continues. “Orville Gibson, our founder, got his first patent creating a mandolin built completely different than other mandolins. Prior to that, they were typically gourd instruments, but he applied the carved back and top method from the violin and cello. And with the jazz-box electric guitars, there were so many Gibson innovations, like the adjustable neck and bridge, the humbucking pickup…. But because we’re a legacy company, we have to tread a bit lighter on some of the innovation, which our previous leadership was too forward on, with features the market wasn’t ready for. But in defense of that, I’ll go back to our heritage instruments. The Flying V and Explorer were all designed out of the space race, but initially commercial flops—too ahead of their time. So that’s why I wanted to split the model line—so we have the latitude to come up with some new things, but can still honor what’s expected of Gibson. Right now, we’re looking at some innovation in electronics and other features we will be bringing to the market.”
Now in his early 60s, DeCola is also still working on his skateboard moves. He tries to get to Nashville’s municipal Two Rivers Skatepark and Rocketown once a week. There, he’s found a coterie of fellow veteran skaters—many of whom are also in the music business, as players, producers, and engineers. “I’d say musicians and skaters have the same kind of soul, the same mindset,” he says. “It is something you can do by yourself, as a form of expression, but when you’ve got your crew and you’re skating, it’s like being with your band. It’s even more fun, and it inspires you. It can make you better.”
DeCola performs a neck adjustment on an ES-335.
Photo courtesy of Gibson
Naturally, every recording Eddie Van Halen ever played on has been pored over by legions of guitar players of all styles. It might seem funny, then, to consider EVH solos that might require more attention. But your 100 Guitarists hosts have their picks of solos that they feel merit a little discussion. Some of these are deep cuts—get ready for some instrumental bonus tracks and Van Halen III mentions—and some are among the biggest radio hits of their time. Just because their hits, though, doesn’t mean we don’t have more to add to the conversation.
We can’t cover everything EVH—Jason has already tried while producing the Runnin’ With the Dweezil podcast. But we cover as much as we can in our longest episode yet. And in the second installment of our current listening segment, we’re talking about new-ish music from Oz Noy and Bill Orcutt.
There are plenty of mighty American rock bands, but relatively few have had as profound an impact on the international musical landscape as X. Along with other select members of punk’s original Class of 1977, including Patti Smith, Richard Hell, and Talking Heads, the Los Angeles-based outfit proved that rock ’n’ roll could be stripped to its bones and still be as literate and allusive as the best work of the songwriters who emerged during the previous decade and were swept up in the corporate-rock tidal wave that punk rebelled against. X’s first three albums–Los Angles, Wild Gift, and Under the Big Black Sun-were a beautiful and provocative foundation, and rocked like Mt. Rushmore.
Last year, X released a new album, Smoke & Fiction, and, after declaring it would be their last, embarked on what was billed as a goodbye tour, seemingly putting a bow on 47 years of their creative journey. But when PG caught up with X at Memphis’s Minglewood Hall in late fall, vocalist and bassist John Doe let us in on a secret: They are going to continue playing select dates and the occasional mini-tour, and will be part of the Sick New World festival in Las Vegas in April 12.
Not-so-secret is that they still rock like Mt. Rushmore, and that the work of all four of the founders–bassist, singer, and songwriter Doe, vocalist and songwriter Exene Cervenka, guitarist Billy Zoom, and drummer D.J. Bonebreak–remains inspired.
Onstage at Minglewood Hall, Doe talked a bit about his lead role in the film-festival-award-winning 2022 remake of the film noir classic D.O.A. But most important, he and Zoom let us in on their minimalist sonic secrets.Brought to you by D’Addario.
Gretsch A Sketch
Since X’s earliest days, Billy Zoom has played Gretsches. In the beginning, it was a Silver Jet, but in recent years he’s preferred the hollowbody G6122T-59 Vintage Select Chet Atkins Country Gentleman. This example roars a little more thanks to the Kent Armstrong P-90 in the neck and a Seymour Duncan DeArmond-style pickup in the bridge. Zoom, who is an electronics wiz, also did some custom wiring and has locking tuners on the guitar.
More DeArmond
Zoom’s sole effect is this vintage DeArmond 602 volume pedal. It helps him reign in the feedback that occasionally comes soaring in, since he stations himself right in front of his amp during shows.
It's a Zoom!
Zoom’s experience with electronics began as a kid, when he began building items from the famed Heath Kit series and made his own CB radio. And since he’s a guitarist, building amps seemed inevitable. This 1x12 was crafted at the request of G&L Guitars, but never came to market. It is switchable between 10 and 30 watts and sports a single Celestion Vintage 30.
Tube Time!
The tube array includes two EL84, 12AX7s in the preamp stage, and a single 12AT7. The rightmost input is for a reverb/tremolo footswitch.
Set the Controls for the Heart of the Big Black Sun
Besides 3-band EQ, reverb, and tremolo, Zoom’s custom wiring allows for a mid-boost that pumps up to 14 dB. Not content with 11, it starts there and goes to 20.
Baby Blue
This amp is also a Zoom creation, with just a tone and volume control (the latter with a low boost). It also relies on 12AX7s and EL84s.
Big Bottom
Here is John Doe’s rig in full: Ampeg and Fender basses, with his simple stack between them. The red head atop his cabs is a rare bird: an Amber Light Walter Woods from the 1970s. These amps are legendary among bass players for their full tone, and especially good for upright bass and eccentric instruments like Doe’s scroll-head Ampeg. “I think they were the first small, solid-state bass amps ever,” Doe offers. They have channels designated for electric and upright basses (Doe says he uses the upright channel, for a mid-dier tone), plus volume, treble, bass, and master volume controls. One of the switches puts the signal out of phase, but he’s not sure what the others do. Then, there’s a Genzler cab with two 12" speakers and four horns, and an Ampeg 4x10.
Scared Scroll
Here’s the headstock of that Ampeg scroll bass, an artifact of the ’60s with a microphone pickup. Doe seems to have a bit of a love/hate relationship with this instrument, which has open tuners and through-body f-style holes on its right and left sides. “The interesting thing,” he says, “is that you cannot have any treble on the pickup. If you do, it sounds like shit. With a pick, you can sort of get away with it.” So he mostly rolls off all the treble to shake the earth.
Jazz Bass II
This is the second Fender Jazz Bass that Doe has owned. He bought his first from a friend in Baltimore for $150, and used it to write and record most of X’s early albums. That one no longer leaves home. But this touring instrument came from the Guitar Castle in Salem, Oregon, and was painted to recreate the vintage vibe of Doe’s historic bass.
