It’s no secret to people who know me that Brian Setzer is my favorite guitarist. Aprently it’s no secret to Surfdog Records either, because out of the blue, I received an email inviting me to review an advanced copy of Brian’s latest album, Brian Setzer’s Rockabilliy Riot! Live From the Planet. Naturally I said, Hell Yes!, because as much as I like Brian Setzer’s music, I like free stuff even more. I guess they figured out that I was a fan after discovering my fairly well-documented obsession with Brian’s tone. Whatever the reason, I’m happy to write up my thoughts on this record.

This album is a collection of recordings from the recent (2011-2012) Rockabilly Riot tour. If you’re not up to date on Brian’s touring habits, he sometimes tours with the big brass band, and sometimes tours with a smaller rockabilly band. This time, he toured the smaller band comprised of two drummers and two standup bassists. Hell, I’m not going to explain all that when I can just quote the details from the official BrianSetzer.com website, so here is that quote which also explains the Live from the Planet title: read more »

One of the questions I see on the guitar forums quite a bit is, “What kind of pickups does this Guild guitar have?” Since I’ve posted i many of these threads, I seem to get a lot of emails with the same question. I thought that I might write up a quick summary of the differences as I know them.

First, let me say that I am by no means the expert on Guild guitars. That honor goes to Hans Moust, author of the excellent book entitled The Guild Guitar Book. Most of what I’ve learned about Guild pickups, I attribute to Hans helping me via email and through forum posts. If you’d like to learn more about Guild guitars, I heartily recommend that you pick up a copy of his book.

I have been a psuedo-collector of Guild guitars since I bought my first real guitar – a Guild S300A-D in 1979. I’ve had the pleasure and good fortune to be able to own many Guild electrics since then, some of which are included on this page. Enough about me though, let’s take a lot at some Guid pickups, starting with the vintage HB1.  read more »

If you’ve followed my blog, you’ll know that I recently purchased a 1963 Fender Bassman amp (6G6-B). Old amps like this often need a lot of work to make them playable, but what attracted me to this one was the fact that the work had already been done. The problem, I would soon discover, was that the work had not been done correctly, or with quality parts.

That’s not to say that the seller was dishonest. The amp worked, and it worked well, but it did not deliver the stellar tone that these amps are famous for. Since I have a soldering iron, and I’m not afraid to use it, I set out on a quest to make a great amp even better. read more »

As I wrote in, How to Capture Brian Setzer’s Tone, I bought a 1963 Fender Bassman head in my quest for tonal nirvana. In a further attempt to deliver the goods, I bought a barely used Mojoton 2×12 cabinet. Though this combination sounded good, it looked like it had been pieced together from parts sourced on Ebay and online classifieds which, of course, it had.

I’m far too obsessive to let mismatched components coexist under my care, so I did what any obsessive nerd would do. I set out to completely change everything.

The cabinet I’d bought was designed to look like an original 1963 Fender Bassman cabinet, which was cool and all, but I’ve never been a fan of the all-blonde look. What really does it for me is the blonde/oxblood combination found on the earlier 1962 Bassmans. Though my amp wouldn’t be historically accurate, I thought this combination would look killer, so I set out to get what I needed in order to make my vision a reality. read more »

I was working on my 1963 Fender Bassman, when I decided to plug in my Gretsch and see if I’d wired the speakers properly. Expecting the delicious tones of the early ’60s amp, I was disappointed to hear silence. Not even a hum! I quickly shut everything down and checked all my connections. The speakers showed the proper resistance, there were no shorts, and the guitar cable was fine. Stymied, I reverted to old-school thinking. This was no digital modeling amp filled with transistors, chips and software, after all. This was a tube amp that was built before I was born—and I’m old! read more »