GEAR CHANGING
FROM CHARLIE CHRISTIAN TO TOM MORELLO, THESE 25 GUITARISTS SHIFTED THE COURSE OF GUITARS, AMPS, EFFECTS AND TONE, TO BRING US WHERE WE ARE TODAY.
INNOVATIONS ONLY MATTER if someone puts them to use, and in the world of the electric guitar, there has always been a player or two eager to put the latest piece of gear to work, all in the hope of taking performance and tone to the next level. Ever since Charlie Christian moved the electric guitar from the back of the orchestra to the forefront with his blade pickup– equipped Gibson ES-150, players have been exploring new ways to make the guitar speak what is inside of them, whether through pickups, hardware, amps, effects or newfangled accessories that can spark the imagination.
While the bulk of these innovations have been the handiwork of enterprising inventors like Ray Butts, Seth Lover, Jim Marshall and Roger Mayer, many of them were pushed along their path by guitarists unsatisfied with the sound of their instrument, amplifier or effects. A few remarkable individuals — like Les Paul and Tom Scholz — wore both the hat of performer and inventor.
All of which is to say the electric guitar would be nowhere today if it weren’t for the players who we celebrate in this issue.
One of the most sensational jazz guitarists of his era, Charlie Christian greatly influenced the evolution of the electric guitar, and particularly the sound of jazz guitar. In 1937, he was playing piano in Oklahoma City when he met Count Basie’s guitarist, Eddie Durham, himself credited as being one of the first to record with an amplified guitar. Durham convinced Christian to get a Gibson ES-150 electric hollowbody, which was 16 inches wide and had a 24 ¾–inch scale mahogany neck, solid mahogany back and sides with a solid spruce top, and a single blade pickup (later dubbed the Charlie Christian pickup). Priced at $150, the guitar came with a matching amplifier, the EH-150, which had a single 10-inch speaker and developed 15-watts via (in the Style 2 version of ’36/’37 ) two 6F6 power tubes, a 5Z4 rectifier, one 6C5 triode and a 6N7 preamp tube.
Armed with this rig, Christian rapidly developed his unique saxophone-style playing approach. Those who witnessed him performing around this time included jazz guitarist Mary Osborne, who was particularly impressed by his sound, which she likened to a “distorted saxophone.” In 1939, following a tip from jazz/blues producer John Hammond, Christian was invited to audition for swing clarinetist Benny Goodman, who was interested in adding electric guitar to his band. Goodman hired Christian and the guitarist quickly made jazz history with his deft singleline soloing on songs like “Airmail Special,” “Honeysuckle Rose” and, especially, “Solo Flight.” Christian’s association with Goodman made him one of the biggest names of the swing era. Through he also played a Gibson ES-250 guitar and EH-185 amp, he always favored the ES-150, which led directly to Gibson’s ES-175 from 1949 (a dual-pickup version debuted in 1953) and still remains highly popular in jazz-guitar circles some 73 years on. Sadly, Christian died of tuberculosis at just 25.
HEAR IT: “Solo Flight” — The Benny Goodman Orchestra
Les Paul was working as a professional guitarist in the 1930s when he turned his highly inventive mind to building a solidbody electric guitar in order to overcome feedback and other issues that plagued amplified hollowbody instruments. In 1939, his solution took shape in the form of what he dubbed the “Log,” basically a four-by-four piece of pine upon which he bolted a Gibson neck, a pair of pickups that he built, and his own bridge and vibrato tailpiece. To make the thing look like a guitar, he sawed an Epiphone archtop body in half and glued the “wings” to the pine block.
Les proved the viability of his concept by using the Log on recordings that he and his trio made with the Andrews Sisters, Bing Crosby and others, but the hallowed guitar company, Gibson, was unimpressed when Les brought it to Kalamazoo to show to the company chiefs in 1941. “I took the Log to Gibson and I spent 10 years trying to convince them that this was the way to go,” he famously said. “But it wasn’t easy. If it wasn’t for Leo Fender I don’t think that ever would have come off. Leo saw more in it than Gibson did.” Besides, Gibson already had the ES-150 electric-archtop (and a matching amp), introduced in 1936 and popularized by Charlie Christian and other jazzers. Who needed a solidbody? But when the Fender Telecaster detonated on the Southern California scene in the early ’50s, Gibson realized they needed to get in the solidbody game, pronto.
Enter Ted McCarty, who joined Gibson in 1948 and became its president just two years later. Armed with a sharp eye for style, he wanted to make an alternative to the slab-sided Telecaster by designing his single-cutaway guitar with an arched, carved-maple top. In 1950, he showed the guitar to Les, who approved the design and felt that it was sufficiently close to what he was going after to let Gibson put his name on it. The Les Paul model would have a rockier start than Fender’s “plank” — and, for a time, even went out of production entirely — but that all changed once players like Mike Bloomfield, Eric Clapton, Peter Green and Mick Taylor started slinging Les Pauls. What Les started with the Log became a success story for Gibson. While it’s true Rickenbacker’s solidbody Model A-22 Electro “Frying Pan” predated Les’s Log, it was a lap steel, not a Spanish-style guitar. Les owns the solidbody concept for his vision and tenacity. There’s irony aplenty that Gibson’s big hit after the Les Paul model was the thinline ES-335, a highly popular reimagining of what Les started with his crude Log.
HEAR IT: Various recordings with the Andrews Sisters and Bing Crosby
It started as a novelty effect for a WWII-era talking puppet and became the ear-grabbing sound behind some of the 1970s’ biggest rock hits. But while it achieved its greatest popularity in the early part of that decade thanks to Bob Heil, the talk box existed in a variety of forms long before he brought his device to market.
It was Alvino Rey who first popularized, if not invented, the effect in the late 1930s, using a throat contact mic to make his steel guitar speak. Rey had the mic wired in reverse to act as a speaker and fed his amplified signal into it. As he performed, his wife, Luise, stood offstage, wearing the device and mouthing the words to the song as Rey’s steel guitar tones emerged from her lips. The same concept was behind the Sonovox, developed by Gilbert Wright in 1939 and demonstrated by a young Lucille Ball in a newsreel. Rey’s bit of ventriloquism was put to use as the voice of Stringy the Talking Steel Guitar, a freakish-looking puppet that sang “St. Louis Blues” in the 1944 film Jam Session.
The talk box as we know it today was created by Nashville steel guitarist Bill
West by sealing an eight-inch speaker in a box, from which extended a length of tubing for the player’s mouth. Steel guitarist Pete Drake put West’s device to use on his 1964 cut “Forever,” and the novelty quickly caught on. Drake began selling the device himself, marketing it as the Talking Music Actuator.
West’s talk box eventually found its way into the rig of Joe Walsh, who would go on to use it on his 1973 hit, “Rocky Mountain Way,” the first record on which most people in the classic-rock era heard the effect. By then, Kustom Electronics had gotten into the act with the Bag, a shoulder-slung device introduced in 1969 and used by Joe Perry on Aerosmith’s “Sweet Emotion” in 1975 and by Jeff Beck that same year on “She’s a Woman” from Blow by Blow.
But all those devices were relatively low wattage. It took Heil’s high-powered Talk Box to make the effect viable for use on stadium and arena stages. He and Walsh made their prototype together on a Sunday afternoon. “We grabbed a 250-watt JBL, built a low-pass filter, got all the plumbing together, and voilà — the Talk Box,” Heil recalled.
Enter Peter Frampton, who had first heard the effect when Drake played on sessions for George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass album, on which Frampton also performed. Frampton — who knew Heil from his days as soundman for Humble Pie — used his Talk Box on 1975’s “Show Me the Way” but made his biggest impression with it on “Do You Feel Like We Do,” from his 1976 smash live album, Frampton Comes Alive! “People went nuts when I went to use the talk box,” he told Guitar Player. “Hey, everybody needs a gimmick, and this was mine.” Since then it’s become a useful tool in the mouths of guitarists ranging from Richie Sambora to Jerry Cantrell.
HEAR IT: “East St. Louis ToodleOo,” Pretzel Logic — Steely Dan (Walter Becker)
Atrue shredder of his day, blues-rock trailblazer Lonnie Mack attained guitar-hero status when his high-octane instrumental version of Chuck Berry’s “Memphis Tennessee” unexpectedly climbed the charts in 1963. He followed with the equally incendiary “Wham!,” which was featured on his debut album, The Wham of That Memphis Man, an instrumental tour-de-force that influenced legions of guitar players during the brief period before the British Invasion swept onto the scene and pushed guitar to unprecedented heights.
Mack played a Gibson Flying V (serial number 007) that he purchased when he was 17, and he used it almost exclusively for his entire career. Early on, he had the V equipped with a modified Bigsby vibrato, which was reworked by his friend and music-store owner Glenn Hughes, who had to do some creative bending to mount a steel crossbeam some six inches below the apex of the “V.” But Mack’s signature tone mostly came from plugging into a Magnatone 260 amplifier, which featured a pitchshifting vibrato that produced a “bendier” effect than the volumemodulating tremolo (never mind being labeled “vibrato”) in Fender amps. As a result, Mack’s explosive tone shimmered with a juicy warble, giving him an instantly recognizable sound that captured the ears of Jeff Beck, SRV, Dickey Betts and many others. — Art Thompson
HEAR IT: “Susie-Q,” The Wham of That Memphis Man