There were multiple excellent guitarists in funk or non-rock bands. A couple more were Danny Webster from the band Slave and Ernie Isley of the Isley Bros. Webster was like 17 when he tore up the solo in Slave's 1st hit Slide.
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OT: Guitar / Guitarist Appreciation Thread
- Thread starter Bleem Phuppert
- Start date
That was the heyday of Rock, R&B, Soul and Country in my opinion. There was so much “cross pollination” going on, it was a golden period for popular music.
I have a Strat and if I could justify a second guitar, it would probably be a Telecaster.
I have a custom Strat and an Epiphone Casino hollow body electric. If I get another electric guitar ( I love acoustic guitars), it will be either a Gibson or a PRS.
Saw Extreme on Saturday Night in Glenside, Pa, with Living Colour. Have posted about Nuno Bettencourt, the guitarist from Extreme before. Vernon Reid is another fantastic guitarist. Seeing both on stage in one night was a treat. Great interviews with Nuno and Vernon by an Australian guitar tech guy. Lots of technical talk.
Too bad I traded my PRS in on the Strat - you could have had right of first refusal and gotten a good deal, assuming it was something your wanted!
Did you like the PRS? I’ve heard some players that I like play them and they sound good to me. I’ve never played one.
I've played a few and like them.
The knock against PRS, for me, is that the QC of their Indonesian guitars can be spotty. Also, you have to be *really* careful when selecting a PRS because of the way they interchange neck profiles. You might like all the features of one guitar only to discover that the neck profile is different from other PRS models and is not to your taste.
I've heard others complain that the pickups are underwound, but the point of a PRS has never really been to make lots of distorted noise. We have Les Pauls for that.
I liked the PRS - it was my first guitar, an SE-245. I bought it for reasons that seemed to make sense at the time, fretboard radius and shorter scale, plus it felt good and was not a cheap guitar I'd be looking to get rid of in a year. And I had read good things about the quality. I only played around with it unamped in the store and ended up having it for 5 yrs. It was made in Korea and the guitar tech at 30th St Guitars here in the city said, just before I traded it in, that he thought their imports were among the best out there.
Then I got antsy, rented a Strat and just liked it a lot so I traded for a Player Plus. All this being said, I'm not really very skilled and would never say I have anything approaching an expert opinion. A friend who is very skilled and someone I rely on for info/opiniions, etc. bought a PRS semi-hollow (not sure the exact model) and loves it. If I heard Mark Knopfler playing my original PRS, I'd probably re-buy it!
my PRS came with metal-oriented seymour duncans as standard 🤘
also a flatter neck profile. and .10-.52 strings.
10-52s?!?
Damn, boy! Is that a git-tar or a damn banjo?! 🤣
My brother-in-law has a PRS that he never, ever plays. They (his band) literally bought it as a stage prop. I'll steal it from him, when it's convenient.
the guitarist for my favorite band uses something like 14-68 strings on his 6-string. uses Drop A tuning.
I can't even imagine. I have a hard enough time with the fretboard in standard tuning.
Try it sometime, it’s not as hard as it seems. Open G and open D are great for blues and Ritchie Havens style. Lots of cool songs in drop D which isn’t difficult.
Oh, I can concentrate my way through Open G and Drop D. But I don't experiment with anything beyond that.
14-68 gauge strings! Is he playing a bass guitar? I’ve never heard of that. I’m sure he isn’t a string bender. The heaviest I’ve ever heard was Stevie Ray Vaughan who supposedly used 13-56 or something. I remember an interview I read with Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top. He said he used very heavy strings when he was young, thinking it was necessary to get that full bluesy tone. He was playing at a blues event and was talking with BB King, who asked him about his guitar strings. When Gibbons explained, King asked him “why are you working so hard? “ It wasn’t necessary. It was more about how you hit the notes. Gibbons went to much lighter strings after that.
When down tuned to Drop A, standard 10-46 strings would be so loose and won't hold tune.
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Okay, I’m not familiar with drop A tuning. I’ve messed around with tuning down a half step and drop D tuning.
After taking a feeler gauge to the string slots of each nut of my four guitars and trying to see what thickness of strings would fit, I put the Ernie Ball light/heavies on the Gretsch BST1000 (The Beast). It is a solid body guitar and was made for only a couple of years. It came with a Dimarzio Super Distortion in the bridge. I ended up replacing the pickups with Dimarzio PAFs of which each has a three-way switch where one selection is a coil-cut for a single-coil sound. Can get some quack out of it.
Great Beato segment with Kirk Hammett of Metallica, on his (and the band's influence) and lots of gear talk.
Bumping up the interview. Fantastic story on how Kirk came to acquire Peter Green's famous Gibson Les Paul guitar that was later purchased by Gary Moore. Starts at about 45 minutes into the interview.
Very good interview. I’m not a huge Metallica fan but I really like Kirk Hammett. he is a top flight player and cool guy. More people should explore the playing of Peter Green. Talk about a guy with tone. BB King once said that of all the blues rock guitarists of the 60s and 70s (many legends) few made him “sweat”, he listed Green at the top ahead of Hendrix and Clapton when it came to tone and phrasing. Fantastic player before his mental health issues. I’m going to post one of Green’s songs below.
Will have to check him out. Kirk is interesting. Funny how he talks about Metallica having elements of "swing," but not in the sense most would think-he was referring to ZZ Top and AC DC.
I don't have a good appreciation of Peter Green, but I am aware of his history. Any recommendation on particular albums/songs? That Gibson Les Paul is quite a revered guitar. I was surprised to learn that Kirk uses that instrument in live performances. Seems many revere that particular guitar. Kirk seems very spiritually connected to the music. At one point, I thought I had the playback speed set to 3/4 speed. While Metallica may not be everyone's cup of tea, the way he describes elements of the songwriting process and what James Hetfield brings to the songwriting process was quite a revelation. He said that James comes up with quite a few complicated and interesting guitar riffs.
Absolutely. As you know, I’m not that well versed in Heavy Metal music or Heavy Rock as I like to say. I like the early stuff of Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, etc Cream and Hendrix really opened the door to that type of music. Over the last 35 years I would probably put Metallica at the top of that sub genre. I have some of their albums. They are very good musicians. It’s a taste thing with me, im a bit of an old soul musically speaking.
Green played on John Mayall's "A Hard Road" album (1967).
Peter Green was one of the best I've ever heard.
BTW, Gary Moore's tribute album Blues For Greenie is an all-time classic.
