Music is the universal language
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Fender Vintera III Early ’60s Bass VI Review
Do you know that feeling when a well-restored vintage car slowly passes you on the street? You stop, you stare, you gasp, and for a fleeting moment, you dream. That is how I felt when I opened the case for the Fender Vintera III Early ’60s Bass VI. It was a peek into a time portal, and I felt an audible, focused exhale leave my lungs. But unlike all those vintage cars I see, I got to take this one for a drive. It was a pleasure that pointed the way to a lot of creative possibilities.
The Middle Way
The concept of a 6-string bass was around for several years before Fender introduced the Bass VI in 1961. Bu though it had formidable rivals—the more straightforward Danelectro 6-string bass, for one—the Bass VI had its own vibe. There’s a hint of chime, a hint of bass, and a trace of the dark arts. The Bass VI became a useful tool for players straddling the fence between octaves, and its 30" scale made it a useful compromise for guitar players wanting to play bass and bass players looking for more chances to get fired. But regardless of how it fits into an individual musician’s life, it remains a valuable tool for finding unusual sounds.
Our Focused Era
As part of the Vintera III line, the Bass VI features many enticing 1960s-vintage details, including a real bone nut, clay dots, and a headstock decal applied over the finish. Fender also claims that the pickups and neck profile are more aligned with early ’60s specs. Given how much those elements could vary from guitar to guitar back then, it’s hard to pinpoint a definitive example. Still, this Vintera III version is outwardly inspired by the most desirable version of the Bass VI, which was discontinued in 1975.
“With almost any approach, the Bass VI is great. No, more than great. It’s inspiring. And plugging in and exploring the possibilities is pure joy.”
Let’s say it now: This bass looks like a million bucks. The gloss polyester candy apple red finish (olympic white and 3-tone sunburst are also available), mint green 3-ply pickguard, and matching headstock are a dazzling combination. The offset alder body and round-laminated rosewood fretboard combination (with clay dot markers) are equally complementary. The guitar is also well put together, with a tight neck joint, no fret issues, and a great setup.
Does it Bass? Does it Guitar?
Before I plug into any amp, I like to hear the resonance of an instrument on its own, and with the Bass VI, this process, in a way, involves listening to two instruments at once. You also have to account for how the different scale, strings, and body size change the way you play. For example, I often found myself strumming the top four strings and taking a more conventional bass approach for the traditional four strings of a bass. Your instincts might differ. But with almost any approach, the Bass VI is great. No, more than great. It’s inspiring. And plugging in and exploring the possibilities is pure joy.
The Bass VI has three single-coil pickups that can be switched on individually or in combination, with dedicated on/off switches. The fourth switch is the bass-strangle switch, which filters the low end. Making my way through various pickup configurations, I found rich, useful tones across the board, but very different uses for different ones. The neck pickup solo is probably my favorite for bass-side picking. But the middle and bridge pickup combination is my favorite for more guitar-style playing.
As a dedicated bass, the Fender is interesting, unusual, and effective. It shares a certain sense of feel with a short-scale 4-string bass, and encourages certain short-scale bass techniques. But the subtle differences in the pickups take the Bass VI from a deep 4-string bass voice to something more pointed, and players looking for more focused tones outside of typical bass range will love what they find here.
In terms of feel, the only rub for me is the string spacing, which is much tighter than my Precision Bass-trained hands are accustomed to. Most players new to the Bass VI will have to adapt in some way. It feels truly unique. But it doesn’t take much practice before you sense that you can make it work creatively.
On the guitar(-ish) side of the equation, the Bass VI can sing as well as it can rumble. In more guitar-like applications, the pickups give me tones that range from dark and brooding (neck and middle) to downright twangy (bridge only). The strangle switch helps the pickups shine a little brighter, too. Splash a little chorus on the signal and nudge the floating tremolo, and the Bass VI becomes an instrument well outside conventional guitar or bass categories.
An Old Idea Made New
Though it was sometimes derided—and more often removed— in its time, the 1960s-era string mute that Fender has re-introduced in this Vintera III version is, for me, a secret weapon. Located between the bridge pickup and the bridge, this very simple device can be rocked into place to mute the strings. At least for me, it was an instant game changer. I think a muted bass line speaks volumes, so I love this option.
The Verdict
The Fender Vintera III Early ’60s Bass VI is a beautiful creation. It sits in a sweet spot between tonally interesting and extremely useful, making it an essential studio staple in my book. Guitar players that play bass on their tracks will love it, and bass players will appreciate its 1960s tone vibes. I went for years without any experience with a Bass VI. Now? I am smitten.
Vintera III Early '60s Bass VI 6-string
6-string Electric Bass with Alder Body, Maple Neck, Rosewood Fingerboard, 3 Single-coil Pickups, and Tremolo - Candy Apple Red
Epiphone Introduces Marcus King El Dorado Acoustic
Epiphone has announced the Marcus King El Dorado, a limited-edition signature acoustic guitar based on a 1970s-era Epiphone model. King, a guitarist, singer, songwriter, and GRAMMY®-nominated artist, has cited a personal connection to the El Dorado, which was his first guitar and a gift from his father. He named his 2020 solo debut album El Dorado after the instrument. The Marcus King El Dorado Limited Edition is available in Antique Natural at authorized Epiphone dealers, Gibson Garage locations in Nashville and London, and at Epiphone.com.
The Marcus King El Dorado is built with a square-shoulder dreadnought body, solid rosewood back and sides, and a solid spruce top.
“This guitar means the world to me. My first El Dorado was a gift from my father, and it carried me through some of the earliest and most important moments of my musical journey,” says Marcus King. “It has always represented family, home, and the songs that shaped me. Partnering with Epiphone to share that feeling with players around the world is an incredible honor, and I hope this guitar inspires people to write their own stories for years to come.”
Highlights include:
- Solid rosewood back and sides, solid spruce top
- Neck: 25.5″ scale mahogany neck with a C profile, headstock volute, and dovetail neck joint
- Body: Four-ply top binding, single-ply back binding
- Headstock: 70s MIJ-style design, bone nut, Epiphone Deluxe tuners with metal buttons, mother-of-pearl Epiphone logo
- Fingerboard: Three-ply bound rosewood, 20 frets, rounded-corner mother-of-pearl block inlays
- Bridge: Belly-down rosewood bridge with compensated bone saddle and black pins; inlays depict South Carolina's outline and Tennessee's Tri-Star emblem
- Pickguard: Custom design based on King's original vintage El Dorado
- Electronics: L.R. Baggs™ Element Bronze under-saddle pickup and preamp, with volume and tone controls mounted at the edge of the soundhole (requires one 9-volt battery, not included)
- Case: Hardshell case with Marcus King signature graphic
Available in Antique Natural finish for a limited time, the Epiphone Marcus King El Dorado carries a street price of $999. For more information visit Epiphone.com.
The release coincides with the Marcus King Band's Darling Blue / No Room For Blue, released May 1, the second half of the Darling Blue project first issued as a Record Store Day exclusive. The 12-track collection is available on all streaming platforms and covers themes including clarity, growth, heartbreak, addiction, and renewal, spanning rock, bluegrass, country, blues, and Americana.
King and his band are touring in support of the release on the Waltz Across Texas Tour and Darling Blue Pt. 2 Tour, with dates in July, August, and September 2026, including markets such as New York City, Nashville, Chicago, Boston, and Atlanta, festival dates, and select shows with Mumford & Sons.
For tour updates, see King's Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube accounts, or marcuskingofficial.com.
Tour Dates
- Aug 20: Pittsburgh, PA — PPG Paints Arena (with Zach Top)
- Aug 21: Allentown, PA — PPL Center (with Zach Top)
- Aug 22: Bangor, ME — Maine Savings Amphitheater (with Zach Top)
- Aug 26: East Hampton, NY — The Clubhouse Hamptons
- Aug 28: Gilford, NH — BankNH Pavilion
- Sep 11: Raleigh, NC — Red Hat Amphitheater
- Sep 12: New York, NY — Summerstage in Central Park
- Sep 13: Ithaca, NY — State Theatre of Ithaca
- Sep 15: Burlington, VT — Flynn Center for the Performing Arts
- Sep 18–20: Telluride, CO — Telluride Blues and Brews Festival
- Sep 20: Charlottesville, VA — John Paul Jones Arena (with Mumford & Sons)
- Sep 22: Grand Rapids, MI — Acrisure Amphitheater (with Mumford & Sons)
- Sep 23: Madison, WI — Kohl Center (with Mumford & Sons)
- Sep 29: Birmingham, AL — Coca-Cola Amphitheater (with Mumford & Sons)
- Oct 1: The Woodlands, TX — Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion (with Mumford & Sons)
- Oct 2: Bossier City, LA — Margaritaville Resort Casino
Spector’s Low-End Lineage
In the world of boutique bass building, lineage matters. Knowledge is passed from mentor to apprentice, from workshop to workshop, and from one generation of builders to the next. Few contemporary builders embody that tradition more clearly than Wil DeYoung.
Today, DeYoung serves as general manager and oversees the custom shop for Spector, one of the most recognizable bass companies in modern music. And though his path to becoming a builder was buoyed by family tradition, his rise to his current positions was more circuitous. In fact, DeYoung didn’t even start out wanting to build instruments. Long before he found himself guiding Spector’s future, he was a college jazz student searching for a place in music. And before he worked with some of the most respected builders in the industry, he was tinkering with inexpensive instruments on his own to better understand how they worked. “My dad dropped out of college to open a record store,” DeYoung says with a laugh. “I was probably doomed from the start to be obsessed with music.”
Growing up in Michigan, music was a constant presence in the DeYoung household. Records by Steely Dan, Joni Mitchell, Larry Carlton, and other artists from the golden era of sophisticated studio musicianship formed the soundtrack of his childhood. Like many aspiring musicians, DeYoung’s first instrument arrived in the form of an inexpensive beginner guitar package that quickly found its way to a corner of the basement, which is surprising considering curiosity and generosity would become the hallmarks of his career.
DeYoung’s formal musical journey began in middle school, not on guitar or bass, but on trombone. Around the same time he joined his school’s band, the church his family attended featured a praise band that needed a bass player. Recognizing their son’s passion for music, DeYoung’s parents bought him a Mexican-made Fender Precision bass. He’d already been plucking his way around a double bass on the side in orchestra and jazz band, but this time, rather than gathering dust, the new instrument became a gamechanger. “I learned a lot on that bass,” he recalls. “It started in church, but then it expanded into every musical opportunity I could find.”
Upon graduating high school, DeYoung enrolled as a music education major at Adrian College before shifting his focus to performance and jazz studies. While saxophone remained his primary instrument academically, bass and guitar steadily became larger parts of his musical identity. He started taking guitar lessons with Professor Dick Lange, and before long, he discovered a well-known truth: Bass players tend to stay busy. “My professors used to tell me, ‘We know you want to be a guitar player, but don’t stop playing bass—every guitar player needs a bass player,’” DeYoung recalls. “That turned out to be absolutely true.”
“The more instruments I worked on, the less it became about my playing and the more it became about what’s possible.”
Yet even as his playing developed, another fascination began to emerge. He wanted to know why instruments felt the way they did. What began as simple curiosity evolved into a hands-on education in repair and modification. DeYoung bought inexpensive instruments, disassembled them, experimented with setups, reshaped necks, and gradually taught himself the fundamentals of guitar construction. “The more instruments I worked on, the less it became about my playing and the more it became about what’s possible,” he says. “I wanted to know how far I could push things.” That curiosity eventually led him into repair work at Guitar Center in Toledo, Ohio, where he spent years developing practical skills—setups, re-frets, acoustic neck resets, bridge repairs, and countless other jobs provided daily education in what works, and what doesn’t, when it comes to instrument design.
Perhaps the most important lessons came from the builders who welcomed him into their shops. One of the earliest was Michigan bass builder Matt Kiefer of Better Mousetrap Guitars. At a time when boutique basses were becoming increasingly sophisticated, Kiefer’s instruments represented the modern aesthetic that appealed to DeYoung: multi-laminate necks, exotic woods, extended-range designs, and meticulous craftsmanship.
Equally influential was archtop builder Denny Kopp of Kopp String Instruments in Ohio. Though DeYoung would go on to a career centered around bass-building, his deepest passion remains the archtop jazz guitar. “I’m still obsessed with archtops,” he says. “D’Angelico and D’Aquisto are the pinnacle for me.” Kopp became both mentor and inspiration. During the construction of DeYoung’s own custom archtop, a 17" Betty Swing Archtop, Kopp documented nearly every step of the process, sharing photographs, explanations, and detailed notes. The experience provided a masterclass in craftsmanship and generosity.
“It was incredible,” DeYoung recalls. “He didn’t have to do any of that. He just loved building guitars and loved sharing what he knew.” Watching a single builder transform raw materials into a finished instrument left a profound impression: “I couldn’t help but be hooked at that point.”
While pursuing graduate studies in jazz guitar, DeYoung knew repair work alone would never satisfy him. He had learned how instruments functioned, how to diagnose problems, and how to improve existing designs. He knew after watching Kopp build him a guitar that what he wanted was to start from scratch. “I’d done enough repair work to understand both the possibilities and the limitations,” he says. “I wanted to see what could happen when you build an instrument from the ground up.” An opportunity to do just that arrived when his future wife, Mia, relocated to New York City. “I figured I’d follow her and see what happened,” DeYoung recalls. “Worst case, I could keep doing repair work, but I knew I wanted to build.”
For a young bassist immersed in jazz, there was one destination that stood above all others: Fodera. Like many players of his generation, DeYoung had spent years listening to artists associated with the company. Victor Wooten, Matt Garrison, Janek Gwizdala, James Genus, Lincoln Goines, Lincoln Schleifer, and Anthony Jackson represented the pinnacle of modern bass playing. Their sounds—and the instruments behind it—had become part of his musical DNA. “That sound was always in my head,” he says. “Why wouldn’t I want to work there?”
The problem was that he had never built a bass professionally. Undeterred, he began calling the company—repeatedly. Over the course of several months, he continued reaching out until persistence finally paid off. “I basically annoyed Laura Fodera into giving me an interview,” he says with a laugh. The interview itself was not what he expected. “I showed up wearing a button-down shirt and khakis, ready for a normal interview.” Instead, he was led directly into the woodshop. “They handed me a bass body and said, ‘You’re going to carve this.’” The practical test functioned more like an audition. Fortunately, it was exactly the kind of challenge DeYoung had spent years preparing for through repair work, experimentation, and self-directed learning.
“I wanted to see what could happen when you build an instrument from the ground up.”
In 2015, he moved to New York City and joined Fodera. Once there, he approached the position with a singular goal: learn everything. “I wanted to understand every part of the build,” he says. “Whether it was my department or not, I wanted to know how it worked.” He stayed late, went in on weekends, and sought opportunities to work in every area of production. Alongside founders Vinny Fodera and Joey Lauricella, builders Aaron Younce and James Michelson became important early mentors. Over time, DeYoung carved necks, routed bodies, installed electronics, fabricated wooden pickup covers and control knobs, performed fretwork, and eventually assumed responsibility for final assembly and setup. For much of his tenure, every bass leaving the shop passed through his hands before reaching its owner.
The role also exposed him to one of the company’s most ambitious technical initiatives: adapting Plek technology to meet the demands of modern electric basses. While Plek systems had originally been developed around acoustic guitars, Fodera’s instruments presented entirely different challenges. Long-scale neck-through basses behaved differently under tension, requiring extensive experimentation and collaboration with the German manufacturer. “We spent a lot of time helping refine what the machine was doing for basses,” DeYoung says. “It taught me a tremendous amount about precision and consistency.”
Years later, when the opportunity emerged to join Spector, DeYoung found himself unexpectedly connected to a much deeper story. The history of Spector and Fodera intersected decades earlier through a woodworking co-op in Brooklyn—Vinny Fodera was Stuart Spector’s first employee. What initially appeared to be a simple career move soon felt more like a continuation of a lineage.
At Spector, DeYoung inherited a legacy unlike any other in the bass world. Stuart Spector and Ned Steinberger created one of the most influential bass designs of the 20th century. The elegant and now-iconic NS body shape transformed the way players thought about ergonomics, comfort, and performance. A generation of bassists, including Sting, Doug Wimbish, Eddie Jackson (Queensrÿche), Rachel Bolan (Skid Row), Guy Pratt (Madonna), and Graham Maby (Joe Jackson), embraced the design. Yet honoring a legacy requires more than preserving the past. For DeYoung, the challenge has been balancing heritage with innovation.
“Anything that’s built for 45 or 50 years is going to be built differently and look differently than it did in the beginning,” he asserts. “It’s going to have all these different benchmarks along the way, indicative of different eras. I spent a lot of time with different instruments evaluating what worked and what didn’t. I wanted to build something that really delivered on the original intention of the design but also included the best of everything that Spector has done over 50 years.”
“Being an enabler of people to grow their own skills and think critically about the jobs that they’re doing, so they can improve the instrument, is such a rewarding thing.”
What he noticed right away about the NS-2 was that some important design elements had changed over the years, whether intentionally or not, including the shape of the body, the neck thickness, and overstand of the fretboard to the top of the body. DeYoung took all of that into consideration when he developed a plan centered on having one definitive, idealized 3D model of the 4-string NS-2. He now refers to that bass as the brand’s “North Star.” Everything else—5-string, short scale, and so on—would be based off one standardized design. “I wasn’t designing from the ground up, but the ethos of every tiny detail mattered,” he attests. “Everything had to be reconsidered.”
The other goal for embarking upon what he now dubs his “revision process” was the import business of Spector, which had historically been separate from instruments coming out of the Custom Shop in upstate New York. “Over the years, there were various Spectors—whether they were made in Korea, China, Indonesia, or Europe—that all had their own identity.” Having elements of the Custom Shop’s craftsmanship flow downstream into the international product line and to a wider audience became part of his grand plan. “If you buy a $179 Squier Strat or buy a $20,000 Masterbuilt Strat, and you put those side by side, you see the same design language. It’s still identifiably a Strat. The pickguard is the same shape; the neck carve is essentially the same—all the stuff that makes it a Strat is still there. And that wasn’t necessarily the case with Spector.”
DeYoung’s persistence with Korg USA, Spector’s parent company, about disseminating the design language to their international partners, ultimately led to his appointment as general manager, and recently came to fruition with the introduction of the Icon series, based out of Indonesia. “The Icon was designed in the Custom Shop with the same neck profile, the same body curves, it has crown inlays, and the same headstock shape,” he explains. “I made sure that all the 3D drawings that we’re using were the same, just adapted for a bolt-on neck for the [Indonesian] factory in the format that they needed. When you put it side-by-side with a custom-shop build, we want people to recognize the design language but also know what it’s going to feel and sound like. It’s a known thing. The NS-2 is iconic.”
Another one of DeYoung’s first initiatives at Spector was to import the holistic approach to bass building he learned at Fodera. “It felt like such an opportunity to open doors for people," he says. It’s a perspective that harkens back to his time with Denny Kopp. Yes, DeYoung got hooked on building, but it’s also abundantly clear that he adopted the concept of generosity Kopp embodied so thoughtfully throughout that process. “Being an enabler of people to grow their own skills and think critically about the jobs that they’re doing, so they can improve the instrument, is such a rewarding thing."
Though he’s been handed the keys to the proverbial castle, DeYoung clearly understands his role as caretaker of an iconic brand, and remains focused on the same qualities that first drew him into the craft: curiosity, continuous improvement, and a deep respect for the musicians who bring these instruments to life. “My role is to bring in a new perspective and a different way to think about things,” he says. “When it comes to guitar building, there’s no one right way to build a guitar.”
Rig Rundown: The Last Dinner Party
Touring behind their 2025 record From the Pyre, English art-rockers the Last Dinner Party stopped at Nashville’s Pinnacle on June 10. PG’s John Bohlinger met up with the band ahead of the show, where guitarists Emily Roberts and Lizzie Mayland walked him through the key pieces of their road kits. Bassist Georgia Davies suffered an injury before the tour, so her tech Max Lilley was filling in on bass. Brought to you by D’Addario.
When the Saints Come Marching In
This Ernie Ball Music Man St. Vincent signature has been Roberts’ primary guitar for the last four or five years. It features custom goldfoil pickups that are actually built using a Firebird profile for a brighter, aggressive sound.
Fly Away
Roberts borrowed this Gibson Flying V from a relative, and it’s used for heavier rock songs in the setlist.
British V Power
Roberts runs this Victory Copper and a Vox AC30 in stereo.
Emily Roberts’ Pedalboard
After a JHS Mini A/B, Roberts runs a Lehle Mono Volume pedal, TC Electronic PolyTune 3, Fulltone OCD, Warm Audio Warm Chorus Vibrato, Supro Tremolo, Warm Audio Pedal76, Centura Klone, Boss EQ-9, Xotic Effects RC Booster, Boss Space Echo RE-202, Strymon BigSky, and Source Audio EQ.
An RJM Music Technology Mastermind PBC helps navigate the stomps.
Sneaky Greek
This Greco semi-hollow electric has replaced Mayland’s Nashville Tele as her main squeeze these days.
Heavy Hitter
This Fender Jazzmaster comes out for heavier, drop-tuned numbers.
Hot-Rodded Ox
Mayland uses two Fender Hot Rod DeVille IV amps (one clean, one dirty) paired with Universal Audio OX boxes to drive the amps while keeping stage volume reasonable.
Lizzie Mayland’s Pedalboard
Mayland runs two boards. The larger includes a Boss TU-3, EQD Arrows, MXR Dyna Comp, EQD Hummingbird, EQD Hoof Reaper, Strymon Timeline, and Strymon BigSky. Utility boxes include a Strymon Multi Switch Plus, Lehle Little Dual, GigRig QuarterMaster, and JHS Mini A/B.
A small second board holds a Strymon Mobius, Hologram Infinite Jets, and GigRig Latchmo X2.
Bass Camp
This Fender American Vintage II Precision bass is used for most of the set.
Baby Blue
This flashy Epiphone Jack Casady, strung with flatwound strings, provides a warm, round sound in the show.
Super(bass)man
Lily runs Fender Super Bassman 800 heads with 6x10 cabinets.
Georgia Davies’/Max Lilley’s Pedalboard
The board runs a Dunlop Volume X Mini, Boss TU-3, Boss NS-2, EQD Blumes, Boss SY-1, Origin Effects Cali76, Darkglass Electronics Microtubes B3K, EHX Bass Clone, Boss DD-200, Tech 21 SansAmp Bass Driver DI, and a GigRig QuarterMaster to help with changes.
Malina Moye Debuts Kramer Pacer Deluxe Signature Guitar
As the company celebrates its 50th anniversary, Kramer has introduced the Malina Moye Pacer Deluxe signature model, developed in collaboration with one of guitar’s most distinctive modern players.
Finished in striking Splash Blue and designed to match Malina Moye’s explosive technique and genre-defying playing, the Pacer Deluxe blends stage-ready sophistication with the fast, responsive feel players expect from Kramer. Built for musicians who demand both versatility and precision, this guitar features a maple neck with skunk stripe, as well as DiMarzio® pickups, with a Virtual Vintage® Blues in the neck position, an Area 67™ in the middle, and a Super Distortion® in the bridge position. The pickups are selected using a five-way blade switch. A master volume and two tone controls (one for the middle pickup and one for the neck pickup) complete the controls, all of which are mounted in a tortoise shell-colored pickguard. It also rocks a Kramer modern two-point non-locking vibrato system, gold knurled knobs, and Kramer locking tuners. In an essential nod to Moye’s own distinctive playing approach, a left-handed version is available. A premium Kramer gig bag with a reproduction of Malina’s signature on the exterior to help keep it safe wherever you go.
Moye’s relationship with the guitar is as original as her sound. Known for playing upside down and left-handed, she has built a striking style that fuses rock, blues, soul, and funk into something instantly recognizable—technically fierce, emotionally charged, and unmistakably her own. Her musicianship places her in the same musical conversation as Eric Gales, Albert King, Elizabeth Cotten, and Jimi Hendrix, while her individuality sets her apart as a truly singular voice.
Whether headlining international tours, releasing boundary-pushing music or inspiring the next generation of players, Malina Moye continues to carve out her own lane in modern guitar culture—proving that true originality isn’t just heard, it’s felt. Her latest album, Dirty, captures that same intensity in recorded form. Blending gritty blues, high-voltage rock, and groove-heavy funk, the project showcases Moye at her most unapologetic and fully realized. The album reinforces what fans and fellow musicians already know: she is an artist who does not follow trends or expectations—she creates her own lane.
The launch of the Malina Moye Pacer Deluxe marks a meaningful milestone in Kramer history, with Moye becoming the brand’s first female signature artist—but its true significance is rooted in artistry, musicianship, and a career forged through talent, vision, and persistence.
Kramer’s Malina Moye Pacer Deluxe carries a street price of $1299. For more information visit kramerguitars.com.
Grez Guitars: Off to the Races
Jeff Tweedy, mastermind of legendary alt-rock act Wilco, is a total gear-head—always seeking out another guitar or amp or bass for his massive collection, seemingly hoping each strange and tantalizing toy sparks some form of inspiration. In January 2025, he opened up his treasure trove for an interview with Reverb, showcasing some of the boutique pieces that have captured his eye and ear. One obvious standout was a Grez Mendocino bass: a lightweight, semi-hollowbody that, with its sharp lipstick pickups, scans as a quirky tribute to the vintage Danelectro aesthetic. “I saw the instrument, [and] it looked austere and interesting,” he says in the video. “I listened to some clips of somebody playing one, and it sounded like something I didn’t have. It’s not like a Danelectro. It’s not like, really, anything.”
That’s basically the creative and business philosophy of Grez Guitars owner/luthier Barry Grzebik, who formed the small but surging company in 2009, operating out of a converted backyard horse barn in Petaluma, California. “I think most of these instruments are pretty versatile, but they’re not infinitely versatile,” he tells Premier Guitar, highlighting his compact line of 4-, 6-, and 12-strings. “I look at it less like ‘Who’s the right player for the instrument?’ A lot of people are. I look at it more like, ‘Who isn’t the right player?’ That’s a smaller group and more easily defined.” He points to the Tweedy-approved Mendocino: “If you’re playing slap-bass, super brash and bright with the treble cranked; if you’re looking for that crazy articulation and a super-fast vibe, these aren’t the instruments for you. Now, if you want something that blooms more interestingly and is a little fatter and richer-sounding, maybe if you’re deciding whether to put flats or rounds on it? [Give me] flat-wounds through a [Ampeg] B-15, and I’m just happy. Whatever that conjures in your mind tonally, that’s the vibe I want to embrace.”
Grzebik never set out to build basses at Grez, having initially focused on guitars. Then again, he really couldn’t have pictured any of this organic rise—making his name as a luthier, spinning that name into a brand, getting online shout-outs from world-famous musicians—given that he spent most of his early career in the realm of electronics and pro audio. Early on, he dreamed of being a player—at least until he had a sobering epiphany of sorts.
“I can’t exactly put my finger on it, but I’ve always wanted to play guitar,” Grzebik says, looking back to his childhood. “The idea of being a musician was always fascinating to me, though I was never successful at doing it. But that doesn’t mean it’s not this thing you desire to do. I tried to play guitar as a young kid—maybe I was 8 or 9. My parents rented an acoustic guitar for me, and I went to a community center and took some group lessons. It didn’t stick, and I don’t even know why. And the guitar vanished because it was rented.”
He continues: “It cropped up again when I was 15 or 16—I got an electric guitar and started to learn to play. Then … while I was still in high school, I realized that I wasn’t really a guitar player. I love it, but it’s not for me. How should I put it? They say if you practice enough, you can become great at the guitar. And I know that when I practice, I become better. But I guess I’m also realistic about how much practice it takes me to get better versus someone else. As a kid, I’d run into other people who play guitar at parties and they’d just smoke me. I realized that, although I love it, it’s not what I’m meant to do—I should put my energy into places where I have more natural talent.”
“As a small custom builder, we’re kind of big, but we’re tiny in the grand scheme of things.”
That area happened to be design. “I was always a mechanical kid,” Grzebik says, recalling how his dad bought him his own toolbox back in the ’70s. “I was fixing my bike, then my buddy’s bike, eventually motorcycles—taking things apart and understanding them.” Those skills dovetailed with music due to his “weird fascination” with hi-fi. “Having a boombox was a new thing, having a stereo,” he says. “When I realized I wasn’t going to make any money playing guitar, I took an electronics class at a local junior college, and the lights just went on: ‘This is amazing. It’s just these parts? There’s not even that many kinds of parts? You put them in a certain order and it does these things?’ All of the sudden, the mystery was gone. It’s like when you learn how a magician does their magic trick. I thought, ‘I can be around guitar and music, but in a different way.’ I feel lucky that I figured that out really early.”
Grzebik experimented a lot—making his own guitar amp, crafting “little battery-powered preamps that you could put in your bass.” By the early ’90s, that obsession led him to work with audio company Apogee, initially designing products like equalizers, amplifiers, and compressors. “That was completely fascinating to me. I was obsessed with that—so much so that I completely stopped playing guitar for a while,” he recalls. “Eventually I was designing loudspeakers. As a junior engineer, you’re not really designing the whole product—the look, the feel, the idea—you’re just given this little thing. ‘Lay out this circuit board.’ ‘Design a power supply.’ ‘We need a heat sink that works better or fits in this spot.’ But as you work your way up the chain, you’re in charge of the whole thing and you’re setting the tone of how a product is going to look and feel and work. So I started to realize that I was a designer. It slowly became more and more the thing I loved to do.”
Around this time, a theme had clearly emerged: Grzebik was an adaptable worker and a creative thinker, willing to go where the road happened to lead. Soon enough, Apogee noticed his customer service skills and started sending him into the field, where he traveled all over the world to oversee installations for major events like the Oscars and the Grammys. “If you spent $100,000 or $200,000 for a sound system for your venue or touring rig, you might expect someone from the company to show up and hand-hold you through the installation—show you what it does, how to tune it,” he says. “That took me away from guitar, but it was so fascinating and exciting.”
“I look at it less like ‘Who’s the right player for the instrument?’ and more like, ‘Who isn’t the right player?’”
After a while, Grzebik realized he could do this kind of thing on his own: “Having been director of engineering for Apogee Sound for a long time, I had a few contacts, and people would call and hire me. I would work as a consultant, and I still do a little bit—designing recording studios here and there. But I realized after a few years that I kind of missed designing products.”
In 2008, he devised an acoustic guitar amp for a small startup, but when the economy tanked, the whole thing unraveled. There was a silver living, though. “That product forced me to drag the guitars I hadn’t used in a decade out of the closet,” he says. “And once they were out of the closet, I didn’t put them back. Then the idea started to creep in: ‘I could probably design a guitar. I know about guitars and woodworking and cabinetry and electronics and sound.’ I would have never thought, when I was in my 20s trying to become a product engineer, that I would be a guitar builder for a living. It didn’t even cross my mind at the time, but it just sort of morphed into it.”
Flash forward to 2026, and Grez is one of the most reputable brands in the custom-guitar space, selling everything from Junior models to baritones, even a Mendocino Bass VI. The company produces somewhere around 100 instruments each year—about two per week—with 40 percent of sales going to dealers and 60 percent direct to customers, plus custom orders on request. “I have the ability to maybe do 150 in the facility I have, and then that’s it,” Grzebik notes. “And by ‘facility,’ what I really mean is ‘horse barn in the backyard.’ Once we get to about 150 a year, which is a place I slowly envision getting to, that’s it. We don’t make more than that. The goal isn’t necessarily to be giant. It’s just me and a few helpers, and we’re enjoying ourselves as best we can making a living. As a small custom builder, we’re kind of big, but we’re tiny in the grand scheme of things.”
“I’m trying to make racehorses that you go out and race.”
For their bass models, the ratio is way different: almost 90 percent direct. But Grzebik isn’t too analytical about that divergence—it’s all been “morphing” slowly, as he moved from semi-hollows and archtop hollowbody guitars into the occasional 4-string. “It was this tiny little growth curve [for bass],” he says. “I made one, and then I made another, and then a few more. It was a slow-motion kind of growth.” Given how labor-intensive the instruments are, he eventually settled into the staple Mendocino model—first as a guitar, then a baritone, then the Bass VI, then the short-scale bass. “Some of it sold well because there’s not a lot of what I’m doing out there,” he continues. “Admittedly, I make weird stuff. I’m not making copies of Fenders. The Mendocino short-scale bass is conceptually based on the Danelectro short-horn bass—it’s a nod to that at its core. It’s a super niche instrument, and you’re only going to sell so many. But as a tiny company, I don’t need to sell that many. I can make these weird things, and if I sell a dozen of this weird model and a dozen of that weird model, all of the sudden I’m making a living.”
Part of that sustainability boils down to resourcefulness. Using as much reclaimed wood as possible, Grzebik maximizes every piece he has: “Because of my manufacturing background, I’m fairly good at keeping common materials. If I have a chunk of Honduran mahogany as a body blank, one piece in stock, that can be used for almost any model I make.” But it also comes back around to the uniqueness of his instruments, which continue to intrigue players like Tweedy, Ian Martin Allison, and Allman Betts Band bassist Justin Corgan. (The latter, Grzebik notes, recently hit the road with a Grez Grand Tour: a 16", semi-hollow double-cutaway model.)
“The people who are into bass, when they look up onstage and don’t quite know what the guy is playing, that really piques their interest,” Grzebik says. “They get a lot of people coming up post-show asking about the instrument. The reality is that most people don’t know Grez. When they look up there and see this thing, they’re asking about it all the time. I think [bassists], most of the time, are getting more attention than they’re used to.”
It all ties back to the Grez ethos: crafting eye-catching objects that are built to be played, not simply admired. “I’m not trying to make show ponies,” Grzebik says with a smile. “I’m trying to make racehorses that you go out and race.”
Recording Dojo: A Deep Dive into Signal Routing
Let’s have an honest conversation, shall we?
How many of us really take creative control of signal routing and use it to build original, inspired effects chains? Most of the time, we reach for a preset—a pedal, a plugin, a multi-effects unit—turn the mix knob, get something quickly, and move on.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with this approach. But you’re swimming in shallow waters. A few strokes further out lies an entire lagoon of sound design most players never see, not because it's intimidating, but because no one ever showed them how to dive in.
Before we swim into these kaleidoscopic waters, I want to explain some basic terms so that everyone has a means of navigation and can really enjoy the experience. Wetsuits on, watches set—we’re going effect diving for this Dojo.
Audio signal paths utilize three basic parameters of flow: serial, parallel, and an optional summing possibility. They also can become increasingly complex depending on how they move. Imagine, for a moment, a school of fish moving collectively through the lagoon—twisting and turning from point to point. That’s a serial event.
Now, imagine that same school splitting into smaller groups, moving in their own clustered directions, and creating independent patterns that unfold simultaneously. That’s a parallel event.
Finally, imagine them all coming back together (summing) into one large mass again.
Swimming in Serial and Parallel
Here’s a simple explanation for a serial audio signal path. Your guitar runs into an overdrive, then into a delay, then into a reverb, and finally into the amplifier—old school (pre “effects loop”). The signal passes through each pedal’s processor in a contiguous sequence, aka serial. [Fig.1]
Parallel signal flow begins the moment we decide to split that path. Instead of one continuous stream, we create multiple streams that exist at the same time. One version of the signal might move through distortion and modulation, while another passes through delay and reverb. [Fig. 2] Most commonly, these paths are brought back together (summed into a single output), but you could easily keep them separate and run them into another input channel on your amp, or a different amp altogether.
Routing = Deeper Waters
Let’s start with something simple. In your DAW, select a track you want to process, and load up your favorite chorus plugin (something luscious, with lots of modulation). Now, add your favorite reverb plugin (maybe a 4-second plate reverb) after the chorus. Play the track. Notice how you have a wide chorus effect that’s sitting in a reverberant field?
Swap the routing order of the plugins and place the reverb first. Listen to the difference! Hear how the reverb is swooshing and modulating with the tides. Add a favorite stereo delay into the scene. Place it in between the reverb and the chorus, and then place it at the end of the chain. Hear the differences.
Taking it further, create an aux stereo bus in your DAW and “click+drag” each plugin from your track over to the bus. (If you’re not sure how to do this, see my Dojo article “Here’s Your Ticket for the Aux Bus”). You can now use your “send” level to adjust how much of this composite effect you want to hear. Nothing should really be different here except that now you can control the volume of all three plugins globally.
Create another aux stereo bus, this time adding a longer delay set to 100 percent wet and following it with a pitch shifter set to +12 semitones (1 octave up). Play your track and mix in this parallel bus by increasing the “send” level to taste. You now have two independent signal chains working at the same time. If you want to swim a bit deeper, pan aux bus one 70 percent left, and aux bus two 70 percent right. Remember, you can automate this as well!
What begins to emerge from this way of thinking is a shift away from basic effect selection and toward unique signal architecture.
If you really want to dive deep, I invite you to check out my new album, 7 Secret Lives of Lucien Midnight. It’s centered on a fictitious character who believes he is living seven intrepid lives in parallel. Until next time, namaste.
Jimmy “Scratch” James: Playing for His Ghosts
“It has to be more about the music than about myself.”
Jimmy “Scratch” James is explaining his approach to guitar from his home in Seattle. It’s one of several conversations we have over a few weeks, on FaceTime and by phone. “I play the guitar like a drum,” he adds, “and even though he was a bass player, not a guitar player, I think about [legendary Motown bassist] James Jamerson a lot.”
“Nobody ever forced older music on me,” he continues. “But that old music—James Brown, Wilson Pickett, Sly Stone—it’s like being at your grandma’s table, and she serves you food that sticks to your ribs. You can go to a drive-through, and that food may look good, but it’s not gonna stick to your ribs the way your grandmother’s food is gonna do. That’s what it’s like listening to those old records.”
It’s been almost a quarter century since the retro-soul movement took root, with record labels like Daptone, Colemine, and Big Crown bringing artists like Sharon Jones, Charles Bradley, and Lee Fields to listeners’ ears; sounds first pioneered more than 60 years ago in places like Memphis, Muscle Shoals, and Detroit. But Jimmy James is a modern-day part of that revival.
Soul and funk place a strong emphasis on the ensemble rather than the individual, so it’s rare for a guitar player to stand out within those genres. But two instrumental bands out of Seattle, True Loves and Parlor Greens, have provided breakout space for James, who may be the retro-soul scene’s first guitar hero. Indeed, the nickname “Scratch” is a reference to rhythm guitar players of the past who brought a percussive beat to their fretwork—musicians like Nile Rodgers of Chic and, before him, Jimmy Nolen of James Brown’s band.
“I gave myself that nickname as an homage to them,” James explains, “But people just call me Jimmy.”
The difference between Parlor Greens and True Loves, Jimmy explains during a call on a rare day off from gigging, “is like the difference between Motown and Stax.” I’ve asked him why he needs two full-time bands. “In the True Loves, we have a horn section, so it’s more groovy that way, like a pop thing. Parlor Greens is an organ trio, and since there are only three of us, I naturally have more sonic space there. I’ve been with True Loves longer, but I love the two bands equally.”
James, now 45, is a double threat on guitar. He’s a rhythm player who “scratches” deep in the pocket of the groove but who’s also able to explode into psychedelic lead-guitar thunder reminiscent of his fellow Seattleite, Jimi Hendrix, who was a big influence on him.
“The thing I love about Hendrix,” James tells me, “and also jazz guys like John Coltrane, Louis Armstrong, and Charlie Parker, is they took risks. I remember Hendrix once, in 1969, went on The Dick Cavett Show and said, ‘The reason I make mistakes is because I’m trying new things.’ I respected him, and he represented freedom to me. They all tried new things. But Hendrix was always expanding. Every time I heard him, I felt like I was going into another dimension, another galaxy.”
“That old music, it’s like being at your grandma’s table, and she serves you food that sticks to your ribs.”
It was during middle school that James’ late older sister first played “Purple Haze” for him. “Let me tell you, that scared me—I never heard anything like it,” James remembers. “I thought it was heavy metal at the time, because my sister was listening to a lot of Metallica then. So I thought Hendrix was current at that time. Of course, I later found out.”
A native of the Holly Park section of South Seattle, James has no spouse or children. He lives to play, and he walks the earth with four ghosts looking over his shoulder.
“My family is all gone—my grandmother, my mother, and my two sisters,” he explains. “They were Leola, Marie, Regina, and Chelsea. They were all musicians, and they all had a profound impact on me. My grandmother was a singer and a championship jitterbugger. My mother was a vocalist, and she sang in a local group called the Champelles. This was the mid ’60s. They opened up for Johnnie Taylor, Solomon Burke, and the Sweet Inspirations. That group had Whitney Houston’s mother, Cissy, in it. My oldest sister, Regina, she was a pianist and flutist. The younger of my sisters, Chelsea, was a drummer, and she played in a band in Seattle in the ’90s called Tribal Therapy. Chelsea used to say to me, ‘Pocket and tempo are everything. Stay out of the way and play the part that fits the song.’
“They’re all gone now,” James says wistfully. “Everything I do is still for them, and it always will be. I started out as a drummer, around the sixth grade, because that’s what my sister played. But then I heard Motown guitar lines like ‘My Girl,’ which was played by Robert White. And I heard Eddie Willis playing the guitar line on ‘I Second That Emotion,’ and I loved that. My mom helped me move the drums that I had over to a friend’s house so we could play. He was playing guitar, but we swapped instruments, and as soon as I started playing some open notes, fooling around on the guitar, I realized that that’s what I was into.”
James’ mother bought him an acoustic guitar in those early days. “I started picking things up off of records, Chuck Berry, B.B. King, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker,” he recalls. “But I also liked folk music. And I liked soul. The first rhythm and blues thing I learned how to play was ‘Mustang Sally.’ Then, in high school, I was in the band, and most high school bands play jazz, but we were more into Kool & the Gang and James Brown. And I couldn’t read music. The horns could read music, but we just had to pick it up and figure out which notes went together.
Jimmy “Scratch” James’ Gear List
Guitars:
1964 Silvertone 1454
1995 Squier Stratocaster
2019 Fender Custom Shop Tele
2022 Fender Custom Shop Stratocaster
Fender ’62 Jazzmaster Reissue
1980 Guild X-170 Archtop
1960s Harmony Rocket
Amps:
Fender Hot Rod Deluxe
Peavey Delta Blues
Templo Devices Nomad 50 Watt Battery Amp
Strings, Picks, & Cables:
D’Addario flatwound strings
Ernie Ball roundwound strings
“Super heavy” picks
Lava cables
“I remember one time I got a bad grade, and my mother took my guitar away. Man, I whimpered, and I cried, and later she told me, ‘That’s when I knew how badly you wanted to play, you never moped like that over anything else.’ I just could not think of anything else; I just wanted to play guitar. I felt safe in the music, I just knew I wanted to play.”
On the road today, James totes two main axes. One is a 1964 red Silvertone that he picked up about 16 years ago at Georgetown Music in Seattle. It has a stock single-coil gold-foil pickup in the neck position, but the bridge pickup is an old Epiphone humbucker that was installed when Seattle luthier Chris Lomba was rehabbing the guitar.
“We bought that instrument from some guy, really for parts,” Lomba recalls on the phone. At the time, Lomba was the resident luthier and guitar tech at Georgetown, where James was a frequent customer. “I remember pulling things out of the scrap pile and just putting it together for Jimmy. And we put in new frets and a new bridge,” Lomba remembers. “The Epiphone pickup in the bridge position was just something we had lying around, like a spare. The amazing thing about that Silvertone is really how much he loves it. Jimmy believes in that guitar 100 percent, and he’s always concerned about its well being.”
“I don’t really mess around with pedals, because I like the sound of the guitar just how it is.”
James’ other go-to axe is a 1995 Mexico-built Squier Stratocaster that his mother purchased for him. Resources in the family were stretched thin, and his mom worked overtime six days a week to make sure her son got the instrument.
“She didn’t need to do that; it was hard for us financially. But we went to a place called American Music so that I could get some fresh strings for another guitar, and I was eyeing that Stratocaster in the store and trying to play it cool; I didn’t want her to notice how much I was looking at it,” James recalls. “Finally, she said to me, ‘You really want that guitar, don’t you? Go ahead and put it up on the counter, you never ask me for nothing. I’ll figure it out.’ I miss my mother; she’s been gone for four years now. I named that Stratocaster ‘Bessie’ for my favorite blues singer, Bessie Smith.”
I ask James how he’s processed so much loss in his life, and he tells me, “I just play through it. I wish they were here. I wish they could see what I’ve done and where I’ve gone around the world to play my guitar. We were all close through music. And playing music is the closest I’ll be to them.”
Watching Jimmy James play through it is to experience an artist conjure his apparitions; it’s a guitar seance onstage. His solos flow as though he’s lighting candles to illuminate a spectral pathway back to the here and now for his lost family. When Jimmy James opens that door, his facial expression becomes otherworldly—his jaw drops agape, silently mouthing the notes ringing through his pickups as he frets them. His wailing, full-step bends soar towards the heavens. He’s playing for his ghosts.
James is precise and articulate, tending to pick each note, avoiding hammer-ons and pull-offs unless the solo cries out for it. His tone is clean and stompbox-free; his guitar cable runs straight to his amp. When he is ready to open this ethereal portal in a solo, he strides over to the amplifier and quickly flips an overdrive switch. It’s all the crunch he needs.
“I don’t really mess around with pedals,” James explains. “Sometimes, if it’s a very powerful amp and there’s too much headroom for it to break up, I’ll put something in front of it. But very rarely, because I like the sound of the guitar just how it is.”
Parlor Greens recently dropped a new record, Emeralds. The last track, “Queen of My Heart,” is James' homage to his late mother. The recording contains the last words she ever spoke to him, in a video selfie sent to his phone shortly before she passed. His guitar leads cry out in an emotional letting-go, a projection of the hurt in Jimmy James’ soul.
“James Jamerson once told his son, ‘If you don’t feel it, don’t play it,’” James relates to me. “That’s how I approach it. Oscar Wilde said something, too: ‘You can only be yourself, because everyone else is taken.’ That’s what it is. If you take Jimi Hendrix’s guitar and hand it to B.B. King, and you take B.B.’s guitar and put it on Jimi Hendrix, they are still gonna sound like themselves. And my mother instilled that in me. She’d tell me, ‘Have a sound! When you hear a Motown track, you know it’s Motown before the words even hit.’”
I comment to Jimmy that, for a 45-year-old man, a guy who grew up in Seattle during the peak of grunge, his spirit feels pretty old. He explains that listening to that classic music from the ’60s and ’70s is what shaped him.
“When I was young, I would hear things like Johnnie Taylor’s ‘Who’s Makin’ Love,’ or ‘California Dreamin’’ by the Mamas & the Papas,” James reminisces. “Musically and lyrically, all that stuff spoke to me. My friends didn’t get it. They’d say, ‘Why are you listening to that grandparents' music?’ But I loved the lyrics and how there was a story to be told. And when you think about the blues, it’s the foundation. So it all felt grounded to me; that older stuff has a deep conviction to it. You can listen to it and know that they worked very hard, and it came from deep within.
“Sometimes I do feel like I was born at the wrong time. But after my mother passed, I had a dream. I came to her, and I said, ‘Mom, what’s the point of my living? Why can’t I be with you all? We could be a family again. And in this dream, she said to me, ‘Don’t be anxious for nothing, baby. You got better things coming your way. Just you wait.’ And she always had that wisdom. Music can change a lot of things.”
Exploring Open-String Voicings
When you hear songs played on guitar, it’s common to hear familiar chords that use open strings: D, C, G, Am, etc. These can make for some beautiful music, but at some point there might be an interest to explore more of what’s possible. One way is to include open strings for new ways to play voicings with close intervals, and also expand the possibilities of the fretboard.
I started to get interested in chords with open strings around the late ’90s. I think I came across the idea from an Eric Johnson video when he mentions “a real pretty Wes chord” (which you can find in Ex. 6). It wasn’t until much later, though, that I started to really explore them. I remember being intrigued by some of the things that were possible when an open string (or two or three) was included in a chord, and how the sound/timbre of the voicing changed when mixed with the fretted notes.
I’d like to start by showing two close voicings I came across (which are not otherwise possible without including an open string) and explain the process I worked through to find them.
I’ve always loved the sound of harmony moving in thirds, so for these examples I’ll be exploring B major sounds and G major sounds focused around the root, 3, 5, 7, 9, and #11.
Ex. 1
Here’s where I eventually ended up: a chord containing the root, 3rd, 7th, 9th, and #11 with two whole steps on the bottom. On a piano, this wouldn’t be too challenging, and normally on guitar, it wouldn’t be possible. But with the addition of the open string we are able to easily get to it.
Something that I find somewhat challenging about these voicings is that the lowest sounding note is not always on the lowest string of the voicing—it might be somewhere in the middle. So when I work on new voicings, I’ll try to play through them one note at a time from lowest note to highest note, then highest to lowest—I think it helps my ears connect with what my eyes are seeing.
Ex. 2
When I started exploring the idea of major 7th chords with open strings, I probably started with something like this: 3rd, 7th, and an open string as root. (You could also start with the 3rd or 7th as an open string, depending on the key.) In this range, we have a familiar fretted interval—a 5th—with an open string a half-step above the 7th.
Ex. 3
After working on the open-string idea for a while, the term “zones” kept coming back to me. Playing in “positions” on the guitar is pretty common, but that has more to do with giving each finger a specific fret. I think the term “zones” leaves a little more interpretation as to what’s possible in each place on the neck. For instance, in this example, there are five “zones” that give us all the possible ways to play these two fretted notes with the open B, and each one of them offers a slightly different area, sound, and range on the fretboard. These will be the shapes we start with as we work through some of the possibilities of each one. Work through Examples 3a through 3e to hear some of the different colors. Even though the last voicing has the 7th an octave higher, it seemed too good not to share here.
Ex. 4
Similar to Ex. 3, these are the possibilities for B, F#, and open G—shapes to build from as we explore these zones.
Ex. 4a gives us a usable range of F# or G in the low end up to an A (the 9th) on the high E string.
The zone for Ex. 4b offers the possibility of adding a note on the 5th string, since the B and F# are on non-adjacent strings. The second voicing also might look familiar as a Bm triad (on the bottom three strings), and the third voicing also allows us to play that same voicing, but with two open strings.
Ex. 4c gives us access to the highest range—reaching up to a high D on some of the voicings here.
Eventually, as I kept exploring, I came across the two chords from Ex. 1 by moving Ex. 3a up an octave and adding the 9th, which gives us Ex. 5. An important idea with this voicing is that with the fretted notes in the lower octave, an open string would create an interval of a half-step, but by moving the fretted notes up an octave, that same open string would then create an interval of a major seventh.
Ex. 6 (Eric Johnson’s “Wes chord”...)
I hope you found something interesting here, or maybe are able to come away with a new voicing you haven’t seen or thought of before. I always try to remember that it’s not so much about how many voicings one knows—it seems more about knowing one or two that you can really use and that can become part of your playing.
If you’d like to dive a little deeper into things like this, I’ve got a Patreon page dedicated to it: https://www.patreon.com/ryanferreira.
Robin Trower’s Days of the Eagle
The 1970s were a time when the great guitar heroes ruled the earth. Legendary 6-string warriors like Jimmy Page, David Gilmour, and Ritchie Blackmore regularly held tens of thousands of fans spellbound in arenas and stadiums across the United States and beyond.
Among those titans stood Robin Trower. His breakthrough album, 1974’s Bridge of Sighs, featuring the FM radio staple “Day of the Eagle,” transformed his power trio into one of the hottest live acts in rock. But it wasn’t just the virtuosity or the riffs that captivated listeners—it was his sound. Vast, emotional and velvety, it moved and churned like a rising tide enveloping the listener.
“We recorded Bridge of Sighs quick—in just a little over two weeks,” Trower recalls to Premier Guitar. “The guitar sound was my invention, but we were very lucky to get Geoff Emerick to engineer it. The studio was quite big, and Geoff just listened while he walked around the room and placed the mics where he thought things sounded best. There was no science—it was just him and his magic set of ears.”
At the time, Emerick was one of the most respected engineers in the world, having worked extensively with the Beatles, and his instinctive approach helped shape the immense, swirling guitar tone that became a defining element of Trower’s music.
The following year, that humungous sound arrived onstage in Stockholm.
On February 3, 1975, Trower, bassist-vocalist James Dewar, and drummer Bill Lordan stepped onto the stage of Stockholm Concert Hall to begin a European tour. The stately 1,770-seat venue—home of the Swedish Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the Nobel Prize ceremonies—was designed for classical music, but its wood-paneled interior gave the trio’s sound an unusual warmth and clarity. What the band didn’t realize was that Swedish Radio was recording the entire performance on a state-of-the-art RKB-branded Nagra eight-track mobile recorder, capturing what would eventually become one of the most celebrated live guitar albums of the decade.
“We were very lucky that tape was rolling that night,” Trower says. “We were performing in a proper concert hall and it sounded fantastic, which inspired us to play in top form. It was very refreshing, because most of the time we were playing in these hockey arenas that sounded awful. We weren’t even aware that they were recording it.”
To Trower’s surprise, a few months later Swedish Radio sent the band a cassette of the broadcast. Like many European broadcasters at the time, the network routinely recorded touring rock acts for its archives. Hearing the power of the performance—and the unusually high quality of the recording—the decision was made to remix the tapes and release them as a live album.
The result surfaced a year later, in March 1976, as Robin Trower Live!, a record that arrived just as the guitarist’s career was reaching its commercial peak. Mixed by Trower and Emerick, the album cracked the Top 10 in the United States and became Trower’s biggest chart success in the U.K., confirming what concert audiences already knew: that the soft-spoken guitarist from Southend had quietly become one of the defining players of the decade.
But despite its reputation among fans, the original Live! album only told part of the story.
The Stockholm concert itself had been considerably reshaped to fit the limitations of a single LP. Of the twelve songs performed that night, only seven were selected for release. Even those tracks were re-sequenced, abandoning the original running order in favor of a set designed to deliver maximum impact across two vinyl sides. The result captured the spirit of the show—but not the full arc of the performance.
“We were very lucky that tape was rolling that night.”
Even the album’s artwork introduced a bit of theatrical sleight of hand. The cover image suggested Trower performing before a vast outdoor stadium crowd—a sea of heads stretching into the distance. In reality, the recording came from a comparatively intimate Scandinavian concert hall.
“It didn’t occur to me at the time,” Trower says when asked about the discrepancy. “There were no photos taken at the gig. The one they used was from a baseball stadium in San Francisco, I believe.”
If the cover leaned toward rock ’n’ roll illusion, the audio carried its own behind-the-scenes adjustments. During the mixing sessions at London’s AIR Studios, Emerick and Trower discovered that Dewar’s vocal microphone had captured substantial spill from the drums and amplifiers onstage, making it unusable. The solution was simple: Dewar re-recorded his vocal tracks in the studio.
“Jimmy sang it all again,” Trower explains matter-of-factly. “He polished it off in about an hour—just ran through it in real time.”
Nearly 50 years later, the new anniversary edition of Live! reveals the full picture for the first time. Remixed by Richard Whittaker from the original tapes, the restored edition presents the entire Stockholm performance exactly as it unfolded that evening—12 songs rather than seven, sequenced in their original order, with Trower’s onstage introductions and the audience’s reactions intact. What once felt like a highlight reel now plays like a complete musical journey.
The difference is striking. The pacing of the show suddenly makes sense. The opening salvo—“Day of the Eagle” followed by “Bridge of Sighs”—builds the atmosphere naturally before the trio moves into material from For Earth Below, which had not yet been released at the time of the concert. Later in the set, the delicate meditation of “Daydream” gives way to the explosive momentum of “Too Rolling Stoned,” a moment when the band shifts into near-punk velocity.
Listening now, what stands out most is the chemistry between the three musicians. Dewar’s bass lines provide both muscle and melody beneath his soulful vocals. Lordan’s drumming drives the music forward with power. And at the center stands Trower himself, shaping vast arcs of spacey atmosphere and psychedelic blues from his Stratocaster. Together, they created a sound that felt far larger than the trio format should allow. And on that winter night in Stockholm, the band was flying.
“If there’s any secret to my tone, it’s that all my guitars have relatively high action and heavier strings.”
So how exactly did Trower achieve that otherworldly sound?
“There was no magic amp or special guitar,” he says. “Almost everything I owned was pretty new. I just went to Manny’s, the legendary guitar shop in New York City, bought a 100-watt Super Lead Marshall, and listened to about six or eight Strats acoustically before settling on a black-and-white one with a maple neck.
“If there’s any secret to my tone, it’s that all my guitars have relatively high action and heavier strings. Back then I played in standard tuning and used .010-gauge strings. It’s all about getting the strings to ring acoustically, and that’s what translates into a great electric sound.”
Effects also played an important role in shaping Trower’s liquid tone. His signal chain typically included a Vox V846 wah, a Shin-ei Uni-Vibe, and a custom-made boost pedal that pushed the signal level before hitting his Marshall. The simple “clean boost” provided a lift for solos without drastically altering the guitar’s character, adding sustain, thickening the Strat’s midrange, and making the Uni-Vibe’s swirling modulation sound even more liquid.
Trower also kept his overall gain surprisingly restrained.
“I usually kept the volume around seven or eight,” he says. “You need to have a little head room. I’m not interested in having too much distortion. My goal is to keep the clarity of the notes and chords and maintain a clear midrange, which is very important to my sound. I tried to avoid creating any mush.”
While Trower is proud of the 50th anniversary edition of Live!, he’s not particularly nostalgic or inclined to dwell on the past. What’s remarkable is that he has continued releasing albums well into his late seventies and early eighties—something very few guitarists from the classic-rock era have managed. In the last decade alone, he has recorded eight albums, including Come and Find Me (2025) and the blistering concert set, One Moment in Time – Live in the USA (2026).
Still, if Trower tends to look forward rather than back, he has no hesitation when it comes to praising the musicians who helped shape his most celebrated work—especially bassist and singer Dewar, who died in 2002 at the age of 59. Dewar was far more than a supporting player in the trio. With his rich, soulful tenor and muscular bass lines, he provided the emotional center of the band’s sound, grounding Trower’s expansive guitar work with a voice that was equal parts blues grit and melodic warmth. Across seven studio albums—from Twice Removed from Yesterday through Victims of the Fury—Dewar emerged as one of the defining vocalists of the 1970s guitar era.
“I’ve always enjoyed the trio format. It forces me to cover a little more ground instrumentally, but in a way, the economy was our secret weapon.”
“I couldn’t have asked for a better collaborator than Jimmy,” Trower says. “He was warm, funny, and never sang a bad note. People always say he’s underrated, and I totally agree. But that probably wouldn’t have been the case if we’d been called the Jimmy Dewar Band,” he adds, with a wry shrug.
Alongside them was drummer Bill Lordan, whose disciplined yet powerful playing completed the chemistry of the group. Lordan, who had previously worked with Sly Stone, brought a precise sense of groove that allowed Trower’s expansive guitar phrasing to breathe, while still driving the music forward with authority. Together, the three musicians created a sound that felt far larger than the trio format might suggest.
For Trower, the stripped-down lineup was never a limitation—it was the very thing that made the band’s sound so powerful. “I’ve always enjoyed the trio format,” he says. “It forces me to cover a little more ground instrumentally, but in a way, the economy was our secret weapon. It was much easier to achieve definition and clarity with just three instruments and a vocal when you played in those big, boomy halls. It would be less of an issue today—the PA systems and monitors are so much better.”
That sense of space and definition is part of what gives Robin Trower Live! its enduring power. Unlike many live albums of the era, which relied on layers of overdubs or heavy post-production polish, the Stockholm recording captures a band operating with remarkable precision and restraint. The trio moves with the ease of musicians who had spent hundreds of nights refining the material onstage, allowing the songs to stretch and breathe without losing their focus.
Years later, Robert Fripp, the famously exacting guitarist of prog-rock pioneers King Crimson, offered a vivid assessment of Trower’s playing during that era. Fripp first encountered Trower while touring the United States in the early 1970s.
“I toured America in 1974 with Ten Years After top of the bill, King Crimson second, and Robin Trower bottom,” Fripp recalled in a 1996 essay penned for the liner notes to a Trower reissue. “The chart positions were the opposite: Ten Years After in the Billboard 160s, Crimson in the 60s, and Trower climbing remorselessly through the Top 20. Nearly every night I went out to listen to him. This was a man who hung himself on the details—the quality of sound, the nuances of each inflection and tearing bend, and the abandonment to the feel of the moment. He saved my life … and later, in England, he even gave me guitar lessons.
“He is one of the very few English guitarists that have mastered bends and wobbles,” Fripp continued. “Not only has he got inside them, with an instinctive knowing of their affective power, but they went to live inside his hands.”
Fripp’s admiration speaks to something many guitarists recognized at the time but rarely articulated so clearly. Trower’s playing was never about speed or flash. Instead, he built his style around touch—wide bends, patient vibrato, and an almost orchestral sense of space that allowed every note to bloom and hang in the air.
That sensibility is all over Robin Trower Live! Nearly half a century on, the sound Trower summoned from a Strat and a Marshall still feels otherworldly. It’s no wonder even Robert Fripp went looking for lessons.
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