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While St. Anger often takes the crown as Metallica’s most controversial record, 1996’s Load and the following year’s Reload have certainly caused a stir over the years. Not only did both records shift away from Metallica’s signature thrash in favour of hard rock and bluesy influences, but some fans have considered them to be ‘loaded’ with filler. However, the pair of records could have been even longer.

Speaking on episode 105 of The Metallica Report, producer Bob Rock explains that Metallica were utterly inspired while writing Load and Reload, overflowing with new ideas. “I think we cut 26 tracks,” he recalls. “I think we were a year into it and James Hetfield had, like, three vocals. And I’m going, ‘This is gonna take fucking five years!’ So we made the decision to split the album.”

• READ MORE: Why have we forgotten the greatest female guitar heroes? The pioneering women who shaped guitar history

While the record marked a shift in tone, the pair of albums would also soundtracks huge change in the band’s personal lives. “We had to get out of town because they all just started having kids!” Rock adds. “They married and stuff, and nothing was getting done. So I said, ‘We’ve got to get out of here [to refocus]’.”

The environmental shift would only amp up the inspiration. “We picked New York, and, in New York, it kind of changed,” he explains. “They started experimenting, like Hetfield’s [version of] Lynyrd Skynyrd.”

Because of this shift in location, there’s also “quite a difference” between how Load and Reload were produced; the split also captures a change in production. “They didn’t have the consoles that we used before, the [Solid State Logic, SSL] 6,000,” he says. “All the studios that were available, they had an SSL 9,000… [Recording engineer] Randy Staub and I fucking hated it. It’s an acquired taste – but that’s what we had to finish it.”

“When I listen to Load and when I was asked to write about [the reissue of] both records, and I talked to Lars [Ulrich] about this, I said, ‘They’re completely sonically different,’” he continues. “Reload is aggressive. But some people love Load! They don’t know what I know.”

Despite the controversy around the records, the experimental records were Metallica’s way of reinventing and evolving with the times. According to Rock, drummer Ulrich played a big part in defining Load and Reload’s sound, eager to capture the feeling of the ‘70s and ‘80s.

Particularly inspired by dual guitarist rock bands like Aerosmith, The Rolling Stones, and Guns N’ Roses, Metallica would see frontman Hetfield and guitarist Kirk Hammett taking on dual rhythm roles. “Before Load, James did all the rhythms,” Rock says. “So the idea was, Kirk was gonna play rhythms along with James. That changed everything – and some people don’t like it!”

The record also saw former bassist Jason Newsted changing his approach to playing, something he had began to do during the recording of 1991’s The Black Album. “Jason wasn’t playing bass like a bass player,” Rock notes. “He was just doubling the guitar. So I taught him: ‘Dude, be a bass player!’ So there’s points where he’s not playing the guitar riff – he’s playing with the drums… So that opened the door, and it’s my fault that I opened that door to them [during The Black Album]. On Load, they embraced it.”

Despite the controversy, Rock was fully supportive of the shift in tone. “I was glad we weren’t copying The Black Album, ‘cause you can’t make The Black Album again,” he explains. “When you make albums like that, it’s everything coming together – where I was, where they were, where culture was, where music was. And so I embraced the fact that they wanted to be a little freer.”

“Load is a great record,” Rock insists. “Actually, my kids like Load better than Reload… But when you put Fuel on off of Reload, they go, ‘Oh!!’ Sonically, it’s more aggressive. It’s more like [Metallica], so to speak.”

While fans continue to debate whether Load and Reload are quality Metallica records or not, Ulrich is in the same camp as Rock. “I think Load and Reload are great records,” he told Revolver Magazine in 2013 [via Ultimate Guitar]. “They are creatively on par with every other record we’ve made.”

“Obviously, they’re bluesier records, and at that time, we were listening to a lot of Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, and AC/DC, and we had a different kind of foundation than records before or after,” he continued. “I also understand that there are people who couldn’t quite figure out what was going on with the haircuts and the rest of it, and that’s fine. But, musically, if you strip all that other stuff away, if you just listen to the 27 songs, it’s a great collection. Those records are on par with everything else that we’ve done creatively… I’m very proud of those records.”

The post “They all started having kids and getting married, and nothing was getting done”: Why Metallica’s Load and Reload were split into two albums appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

When you think about the most name-checked guitarist of all time, who do you think of? Hendrix? EVH? Good guesses, but we think it’s gotta be Waukesha, Wisconsin’s own Les Paul. Though his name lies atop one of the most popular guitar models of all time, there’s so much more to Les. His inventions span modern recording history, and with his music—whether with then-wife Mary Ford, solo, with Chet Atkins—he left a mark across genres. And though neither host owns a Les Paul, we’ve both shared space with The Log.

Thanks to Our Sponsor, Gibson!

Fortin Amplification has unveiled the Kali pre-amp / distortion pedal, designed to deliver the legendary, brutal tone of the iconic Fortin Cali amplifier.

Fortin Kali Preamp/Distortion pedal

This new pre-amp/distortion pedal allows players to inject the modern rock / metal Cali sound directly into their own rig.

Meticulously crafted by renowned gain specialist Mike Fortin, the Kali pedal has been fine-tuned by Fortin to recreate the amp that came before it. Whether you’re in the studio or on stage, this pedal will provide the precision, power, and clarity that distinguished the original amp.

Key features of the Kali pedal include:

• Active 3-Band EQ: Offering total tonal control to shape your sound
• 3 voicings – Vintage, Raw and Saturated
• Each gain control has a three-way bright switch to provide unlimited tonal options
• Dual Channel Footswitching: Two footswitchable channels for ultimate flexibility

Like the Cali amplifier it is inspired by, the Kali pedal is engineered to deliver the most versatile, most powerful modded tones possible. For guitarists seeking to have complete control of their dirt, this pedal provides the legendary Fortin tone.

Fortin’s Kali pre-amp / distortion pedal carries a street price of $299.00 (USD). For more information visit fortinamps.com.

Last month, after it was revealed that 500 of the “finest guitars from the golden age of American guitar making” had been donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, former Rolling Stone Mick Taylor claimed the collection included a 1959 sunburst Gibson Les Paul stolen from him in the early ‘70s.

In a well-documented story, the “Keithburst” Les Paul – which was played by Keith Richards during the band’s 1964 Ed Sullivan Show appearance, as well as by Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page – was taken along with eight other guitars from Villa Nellcôte, the mansion on the French Riviera where the Stones recorded their 1972 album, Exile on Main St.

• READ MORE: “I think he and his band are gonna save rock ‘n’ roll”: Lzzy Hale on why “humble kid” Wolfgang Van Halen is the future of guitar

A source last month said Mick Taylor was “mystified as to how his property found its way into the Met’s collection”.

Now, while it agrees Taylor played the instrument in the past, the Met now contests that he never actually owned it, along with certain elements of his version of events.

We do know some of the guitar’s history. It went up for auction via Christie’s – but failed to sell – and appeared on the cover of its catalogue in 2004, and featured in a Met exhibition in 2019. The rest, however, remains hazy. As Guitar World notes, there were no claims during either of these events from Mick Taylor or his team.

According to the Met’s version of events, the “Keithburst” Les Paul was actually the property of Keith Richards until 1971, and wasn’t one of the nine guitars stolen from Villa Nellcôte.

The Met lists Adrian Miller as the guitar’s owner in 1971, but stops short of mentioning how he acquired the guitar. Miller later sold it to Heavy Metal Kids’ Cosmo Verrico in 1971, who tells the New York Times he “can’t recall how Miller acquired the guitar”.

Also per the Met’s claim, after the Keithburst Les Paul failed to sell at the 2004 Christie’s auction, it was bought in 2006 by Peter Svensson, a music producer from Sweden. It was later bought by billionaire businessman Dirk Ziff, who lent it to the Met in 2019 for its Play it Loud exhibition.

Now, the New York Times says it has received a message from Mick Taylor’s business manager Marlies Damming, which reads: “We would like the Metropolitan Museum to make the guitar available so that we can inspect it, and confirm its provenance one way or the other.”

Guitar.com has reached out to Mick Taylor’s team and the Metropolitan Museum of Art for comment.

The post The Met challenges Mick Taylor’s claim that he once owned the 1959 “Keithburst” Les Paul which appears in new exhibit appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Skunk Anansie didn’t wait nearly a decade between albums just to rehash the same rock clichés. On The Painful Truth – their first record in nine years – the genre-defying UK quartet returns with a renewed approach to writing and sound design, and a rethinking of what a “guitar band” can be in 2024.

Speaking in a new interview with Blabbermouth, frontwoman Skin says that while the guitar is still “really important”, these days, the band is more interested in telling stories without drowning their songs in recycled riffs.

• READ MORE: Slayer’s Gary Holt thinks that some modern guitarists don’t put enough “conviction” and “passion” into their riffs

“The way we used guitars, we started as a rock band. We’ve developed from there,” she explains. “I think electronics is the most exciting thing on the planet right now, the things that they can do. That’s really exciting.”

“That’s where the creativity is on the planet. It’s not in rock guitar. It’s about, ‘Where do you place the guitars?’ We are essentially a guitar band. It’s really important, but you don’t have to do all the big old fucking riffs.”

In fact, Skin argues that the genre’s biggest sacred cow – the riff – is creatively spent.

“They’ve been done. Really, every single riff in every connotation has already been done. It’s that people like those. It’s things that people like, so that you can offer different flavours, and people will like them. It’s that Led Zeppelin and AC/DC did them, and you can change them a bit, and people still like them because they like that sound. It’s all been fucking done.”

For now, what makes the guitar “exciting”, says Skin, “is that you can place and texture them and juxtapose them with electronic songs. That’s where the excitement lies with me: how can you do what we do, but do it in a different way?”

That said, tearing up the playbook comes with its own set of risks.

“That involves a lot of experimentation,” she admits. “To be honest, you go down a path and at the end, it can be a dead end, and you have to stop and go down a different path. There’s a lot of experimentation in that. [Laughs] It’s not like playing a kick drum to find the right sound for two days. We don’t do that because we have a drummer. It’s about finding ways to tell the story that doesn’t clog it up with riffs.”

The post “Every single riff in every connotation has already been done”: Why this “guitar band” is turning its attention to electronics appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Wolfgang Van Halen might be the son of a rock god, but Lzzy Hale believes that’s far from the only thing that makes him special. In fact, the Halestorm frontwoman says the Mammoth leader is one of the rare few carrying the future of rock on his shoulders – and doing it without ego.

Speaking in the new issue of Classic Rock Magazine, Hale reflects on an early encounter with Wolfgang, and how quickly he stood out from other second-generation rockstars.

• READ MORE: “That might be stupid coming from the son of Eddie Van Halen”: The surprising opinion Wolfgang Van Halen holds about guitar solos

“He’s a humble kid, there’s none of that ‘I’m a rock star’s kid’ stuff,” she says. “I’ve met quite a few of those guys that think that they’re better than everybody else because their dad was famous. That’s never been Wolfie.”

One moment that stuck with Hale was a visit to 5150 Studios – the legendary space built by the late Eddie Van Halen, where many of the band’s seminal albums were recorded.

“He took us to 5150 [Studios] and it still had all the tapes up there. There was Jump, the old analogue tapes, everything marked, everything organised to a T,” she recalls. “And we’re like: ‘Are we supposed to be in here?’ He’s like: ‘Oh yeah, dad won’t mind’ I’m like, this isn’t just anybody’s dad’s garage!”

“I think he and his band are gonna save rock ‘n’ roll,” Hale adds. “He’s a part of that small club of rock stars that are like: ‘Hey, you are more than welcome to be a part of this cool thing that we’re doing, but we don’t need you, we’re gonna do it anyway.”

Meanwhile, Wolfgang himself has opened up about the weight of carrying the Van Halen name – and the balancing act of honouring that legacy while forging his own path:

“Man, is it a fucking tight rope to walk, with the shadow I’m under and the expectations,” says the guitarist. “And it’s, like, I wanna be able to have the opportunity to reference my lineage, but not copy it and just put a flag in it and sit there and play Panama for everybody every night. I wanna be able to be my own person.”

The post “I think he and his band are gonna save rock ‘n’ roll”: Lzzy Hale on why “humble kid” Wolfgang Van Halen is the future of guitar appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

The Black Keys have opened up about the advice that nearly derailed their career before it even took off.

More than 20 years on from their humble beginnings in Akron, Ohio, guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney are reflecting on the so-called music industry wisdom they were urged to follow – and how ignoring it might’ve been the best decision they ever made as a band.

• READ MORE: “It was very simple: We had lost all of our income for the year”: The Black Keys come clean on cancelled tour and justify controversial cryptocurrency show

“There are a lot of false prophets in this business,” says Auerbach in the August issue of Classic Rock. “People who want to give you advice, and really they have no experience or any fucking idea what they’re talking about. There was this whole indie-rock credibility thing that was rampant in the music industry at the time.”

That scene came with all kinds of unwritten rules – and one in particular stuck with the duo for all the wrong reasons.

“The single worst piece of advice we ever got as a band was basically: don’t allow a song into a commercial,” says Carney.

“It put this whole thing in our heads of worrying about what other people were going to say, rather than paying attention to the fact our music isn’t on the radio, and this was a way for people to hear our shit. And we could also maybe pay some fucking bills.”

The band didn’t wait long to break that so-called rule. After initially refusing to license their music to commercials for fear of being branded ‘sell-outs’, Auerback and Carney soon relented. One of their first major breakthroughs came when their song Set You Free was licensed for a Nissan ad – a move Auerbach later admitted ‘helped immensely’ by putting the Black Keys on the radar of a wider audience.

What followed was a run of high-profile syncs, from Sony Ericsson and Victoria’s Secret to American Express and Zales, that introduced their music to millions around the world.

Looking back on their journey, Carney doesn’t mince words: “There’s a reason the music business is considered a slimy hellhole,” says the drummer, who earlier this year spoke out about the band’s ill-fated North American tour and the fallout that led them to fire their management.

“Be careful who you trust. I wish the work was just making the songs and playing the shows, but it’s also worrying about who you’re working with, and every venue you’re playing, and ticket prices…”

“It all comes down to the band,” he adds. “No one is going to be as passionate about it as the two guys in the band, but you have to maintain a level of hyper-vigilance, or else it’s gonna get fucked up.”

The post Why the Black Keys ignored “the single worst piece of advice we ever got as a band” and made their careers appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

$789/£799, gretschguitars.com

The Gretsch Roots Collection has been around for several years now, offering a variety of affordable rootsy resonator guitars and ukuleles crafted in China. The latest shiny addition to the line is a small batch “Bell Brass” release of their metal body resonator – The Honey Dipper. Tasty.

• READ MORE: Heritage Ascent+ H-535 review: “this could easily become your new main guitar”

The Honey Dipper takes key design points from the legendary National Triolian design of the late 1920s – there’s a single aluminium cone, a 12 fret neck join, a pair of F-holes in the shoulders and a coverplate with cut-out ornamentation. Where the Gretsch instrument differs at first glance is in the use of Padauk for the bound fingerboard and the solid “paddle” headstock rather than the slot head that we might expect to find on a 12-fret guitar.

Frankly I’m all for this – not only does the risk of bleeding out from a viciously sharp string end lessen, but you also get a genuinely attractive (if undeniably kitsch) headstock covered in pearloid plastic with a great big vertical Gretsch logo to let everyone know that you are a free-thinking acoustic balladeer who won’t conform to labels.

Gretsch G29202 Honey Dipper – what is it?

Gretsch describes the Honey Dipper as a round-neck guitar – which is technically correct in that it is not a square-neck instrument designed for lap position playing. With me so far? What may cause some confusion, however, is the pronounced V-shape to that same neck. It’s reasonably comfortable if you’re used to a V profile, but may come as a bit of a shock if you’re not. It is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a rounded C or D shape.

Another thing that may surprise players new to the resonator is the relatively high default action. This is not the slinky string height of a modern acoustic guitar and there are several good reasons at play. First of all, the resonator guitar was originally designed for volume and that often means a heavy hand from the player – with or without finger picks.

There is also the fact that the biscuit bridge of a resonator guitar sits in the centre of the cone and the more downward pressure it gets, the better the guitar sounds. Finally, the joy of a resonator guitar is as a slide instrument and, as anyone who has shifted a brass bottleneck across the strings will know, a higher action will allow for a much clearer sound and help avoid rattling the slide against the frets.

Aside from these notes, the usual resonator health and safety guidelines apply. This is a metal-bodied instrument and is considerably heavier than an acoustic guitar of the same size. Also, for the love of Robert Johnson, do not play this naked on a cold day. With those caveats out of the way let’s head down to the crossroads and see if there’s a deal to be made.

Gretsch G29202 Honey Dipper – feel and sounds

Kicking off with some exploratory blues in standard tuning, I am greeted with a chunky sound and a particularly pleasing honk on the 3rd and 4th strings. Don’t be fooled into thinking that a metal-bodied guitar has to sound cold and impersonal. It’s brash but in a good way, and comes closer to the sound of a vintage original than anyone might have the right to expect at this price point.

Entry-level resonator guitars can sound a bit watery, especially in the top end, but the Honey Dipper offers a throaty bark and solid trebles. Very nice. Despite the higher action you can still execute some top string bends too if you’re feeling ambitious.

One important feature here is the 12-fret neck. This, coupled with the 25” scale length, makes for a warmer sound than usually encountered on a 14-fret instrument. It also means a more compact guitar that feels very comfortable against the body here. The real test will be dropping the beast into an open tuning – DADF#AD here we go!

A quick point but it’s one worth making: A reso guitar can expect to spend time in several different tunings over the course of its lifetime and Gretsch scores points here for the well-cut nut and smooth Grover Sta-Tite tuners.

There is a deep joy to be found in an open-tuned resonator guitar due to the, well, the resonance. In particular, the sympathetic resonance of open strings vibrating together as you play. It’s like the guitar takes off with a delicious internal reverb. And this does happen with the Honey Dipper to some degree as we dig in – it’s not the choir-like response of a Fine Resophonic guitar by Mike Lewis but it is pleasing nonetheless.

With a heavy brass slide we get a touch of the volume that defines a resonator. These instruments were created in the era before amplification and the ability to fill a room with the voice of your instrument was top of the list of requirements for a musician of the time. The guitar sounds full across the fretboard and there is a satisfyingly grunty bass response here.

The only challenge is hitting the octave notes cleanly on the 12 fret neck, especially if you wear your slide on the 3rd finger – but that’s the nature of the beast and takes only minor adjustment. The V-neck is actually a lot more comfortable with a slide and the whole instrument just works at its best in this context.

Gretsch G29202 Honey Dipper – should I buy one?

Now, there is an argument to suggest that the horrific living conditions caused by The Great Depression of the 1920s have been romanticised to the point where the pared-back aesthetic of small brown guitars, ukuleles and resonators has become a design language of its own. As such the looks of an instrument carry as much semantic weight as the sound. This certainly looks and sounds the part.

Given that at the time of writing the Gretsch Roots Collection boasts eight different resonator guitar models, there is every chance that if this guitar doesn’t do it for you then Gretsch will be able to provide you with something that will. That said, the Honey Dipper is an impressive, relatively affordable resonator guitar – if you’re new to the blues or looking for some new textures in the studio then have at it!

Gretsch G29202 Honey Dipper – alternatives

If you really want to get authentic with your Depression-era resonators, then you can always try and pick up an original 1930s National Triolian – though you’ll be paying the thick end of five grand for the privilege. If you want an even more affordable resonator option, UK brand Gear4Music’s in-house Hartwood Electro Resonator is a snip at $570/£449.99, while a Johnson 995 Biscuit Electro Resonator ($1,223/£999) is another solid mid-priced option.

The post Gretsch G29202 Honey Dipper Special Resonator review: “it comes closer to the sound of a vintage original than anyone might have the right to expect” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

If you’ve never worked on a tube amp, it can be hard to find your way into understanding how they work. Somehow, we create a tiny signal by making metal strings on our guitars oscillate over a magnet wrapped with a coil of wire, and our amp takes that electrical signal and gets it to drive a speaker. (And driving the speaker is basically the opposite of how the signal started: It is a coil of wire moving within a magnet, which drives a speaker cone that moves air.) I’d like to simplify some of the processes that go on in our amps, so even if you’re not an expert, you’ll have some idea of what’s going on.

Let’s look at how tubes work and the role they play in turning our quiet, tiny guitar signals into sound. There are various types of vacuum tubes, but in the guitar amp world, three types are most common: rectifier tubes, preamp tubes, and power amp tubes.

Let’s start with rectifier tubes. As part of an amp’s power supply—the part of the amplifier circuit that makes the voltages the rest of the circuit needs to operate—rectifier tubes help convert, or “rectify,” the AC (alternating current) from the wall into DC (direct current). The amp’s power transformer only runs on AC, so it’s up to the rectifier tube to create DC, which is needed by the other tubes. (The filter capacitors are also part of the power supply, and these are needed to make proper DC from rectified AC, as well as a “choke” transformer.) The tubes that we use in this part of our amp are specialty tubes designed to do this one particular task and are not interchangeable with preamp and power amp tubes.

“The small guitar signal creates electrical movement on the screen of the tube, which causes movement on the plate, which gets significantly amplified due to its high-voltage potential.”

The preamp section’s job is to take the delicate signal from the guitar and amplify it to a level that can drive the output section. This is done in stages because of how small the guitar signal is, which is why we have many 12AX7-type tubes in our amps. Here’s how preamp tubes function:

Typically, V1 (valve 1—this is not a specific part on a schematic in this article but refers to the first tube the guitar signal encounters) will take that delicate guitar signal and amplify it by about 100 times before we do anything with it in the amp. This process repeats in the other preamp tube positions as well. How does a tube make a signal 100 times bigger? The V1 tube has about 300V DC on its plate (and a few volts on the cathode, but I don’t want to get too technical here and explain that—let’s just say that’s part of the operation of the tube). The small guitar signal creates electrical movement on the screen of the tube, which causes movement on the plate, which gets significantly amplified due to its high-voltage potential.

Because these are still small signals, the tubes are small. A 12AX7-type tube has two sections. In this case, V1 can also be used as a second gain stage or the first stage for another channel input of the amp.

Power tubes are bigger. There’s only a single stage inside the glass. Why? Because they do more work. They are the horsepower of the amplifier. They need to drive the output transformer, which pushes that speaker cone to move air. The overall function is the same but with a higher potential. In the power tube’s case, it’s usually 400–500V DC. More voltage means more power available. When we create electrical response on the power tubes with our signal, we get that analog response on the plates. Those plates are connected to an output transformer. The output transformer does what its name states by transforming the signal on the primary side (the power tube side) to what is on the secondary side, which is the speaker.

The power tubes need that high-voltage DC to operate, but a speaker only wants 10–30V AC to rock our world. The output transformer separates the AC guitar signal from the DC power supply. Again, there’s a bit more to this, but the power tubes are coupled to the speaker, driving that speaker and doing the hard work of moving air.

You might not be ready to go repair your amp, but hopefully, you now have a better idea of how your tubes work.