tech

The current version of the Fender Mustang Bass (above) features, as the model always has, a short 30” scale. Most bass guitars are long-scale instruments. Students and other younger players, however, may prefer to start with a short-scale bass guitar and then “graduate” up to a long-scale bass. Fender itself defined the long-scale bass guitar when it introduced the profoundly...

Tuning down is extremely common today. In fact it’s almost a quaint curiosity when a band chooses to perform in standard tuning. But it wasn’t always this way. Once upon a time, almost everybody played in standard tuning (E A D G B E). But guitarists, like Indiana Jones and astronauts, are always striving for adventure and discovery, and this...

Back in the late 1960s certain factions in the amplifier industry went to great pains to introduce radical, new solid-state guitar amps and to promote them, partly at least, on the premise that they were “sturdier than fragile tube amps.” Tubes can be fragile if you don’t treat them right, certainly, but look after your tubes and the amp they...

Ever since Jimi Hendrix conjured up “Purple Haze” with an octave pedal, a distortion box and his wiry imagination – and made one of the most eloquent anti-war statements with the pure sonics of “Machine Gun” – electric guitars and effects pedals have been kissin’ cousins. If you’re new to the world of effects or if you stepped away for...

The photo above might give you a sense of the energy at the L.A. Coliseum on Saturday night, where Rage Against the Machine regrouped for a massive closing slot during L.A. Rising, the band's first festival. The band capped off a day of music that ranged from hard punk to art rock to classic hip hop to many combinations thereof...