Digital Products

This issue marks our foray into serving up three song transcriptions per issue (print edition only), with this month’s offerings including tablature for Jack White’s “I’m Shakin’,” Brent Mason’s “Hot Wired,” and the Allman Brothers Band’s “Little Martha.” Meanwhile, our cover story this month talks to gruesome shredder extraordinaire John 5 about his latest Fender Custom Shop Telecaster and the making of his new album, Season of the Witch, and other artist features include chats with British songwriting icon Robyn Hitchcock, psych-rock freaks King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, and Pallbearer’s Devin Holt and Brett Campbell. On the gear front, we’ve got a how-to on understanding and optimizing expression pedals in your rig, a bass-overdrive review roundup—which includes Tech 21’s SansAmp Bass Driver DI Version 2, Gallien-Krueger’s Plex, the Providence Brick Drive, and Two Notes’ Le Bass—and reviews of Electro-Harmonix’s Blurst, the Cusack Orthrus, TWA’s Hot Saké, Taylor’s Mini-e bass, the Carr Mercury V, Strymon’s Riverside, Mooer’s Ocean Machine, the Breedlove Premier Concerto, the Boss EV-30 expression pedal, Ibanez’s SRH505F bass, Seymour Duncan’s PowerStage 170, and Winfield’s Dust Devil combo.

In our cover story this month we talk to Animals as Leaders mastermind Tosin Abasi and his 8-string cohort Javier Reyes about their new album, The Madness of Many. Our other artist interviews include chats with Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders, Warpaint’s Emily Kokal and Theresa Wayman, Stick Men’s Tony Levin and Markus Reuter, Meshuggah’s Mårten Hagström, Lynyrd Skynyrd cofounder Gary Rossington, and “Godfather of Fusion” Larry Coryell. We’ve also got a bonus lesson on learning to play outside the conventional chord-scale mindset. As for gear coverage, this month we dive deep into the world of bucket-brigade effects of yesterday and today, as well as review Foxpedal’s Defector, the Spector Timbre acoustic 4-string, TC Electronic’s Tailspin, Free the Tone’s Ambi Space, the Eastwood Senn, Sandberg’s Forty Eight bass, the Milkman Pint, MXR’s Echoplex Delay, Collings OM2H T, Dunlop’s CBM105Q Mini Bass Cry Baby, Fender ’57 Custom Pro , Wren and Cuff’s Sonder, Lollar’s P-90 Staple, and the Ernie Ball Ambient Delay.

This month our “Echoes from the Garage” cover story examines not just at the seminal bands, guitarists, and gear from the ’60s garage-rock movement, but also looks at the effect they had on subsequent rock forms from the ’70s to today. In other artist coverage, shred lords Steve Vai and Devin Townsend interview each other about their latest releases, Modern Primitive / Passion & Warfare and Transcendence, respectively. We also talk to Pixies’ Joey Santiago and bassist Paz Lenchantin, bluesman Dex Romweber, Stargazer Lilies’ John Cep and Kim Field, Steve Rothery from storied U.K. prog outfit Marillion, and Stephen Egerton from legendary SoCal punk quartet Descendents. We’ve also got a feature lesson by gypsy-jazz scholar Michael Horowitz on the essential elements of Django Reinhardt’s groundbreaking style. Our gear reviews this month include in-depth looks at the retro-vibed Danelectro ’64 and Guild S-200 T-Bird 6-strings, as well as Fender’s new Mustang PJ bass, the Tremulator Plus, Bogner’s new Goldfinger 54 Phi head and 2×12, the Parson 1975HW head, Experimental Noize’s Aphazing, Taurus’ Stomp-Head 5.CE, Mu-Fx’s Boostron 3, the Cort 5B Plus AS bass, CopperSound’s Telegraph Stutter, TC Electronic’s WireTap Riff Recorder, and Journey Instruments’ OB660 bass.