Author: JON

When you hear the word “guitar,” what image comes into your mind?

If you are thinking about an electric guitar, it’s likely you have an image of a Stratocaster in your mind’s eye. But if you thought about an acoustic guitar, you almost certainly imagined a dreadnaught.

Dreadnaughts are by far the most common size of guitar today. They feature a bigger body — bigger than all of the various acoustic sizes except jumbo — that offers an equally big sound. Dreadnaught guitars are usually louder and deeper in tone than 000, folk, or parlor body styles, and the large-bodied guitar has found a home across rock, country, and bluegrass genres.

But this wasn’t always the case. The guitar itself has a long and storied history, but the dreadnaught didn’t come about until the early 1900s.

C.F. Martin’s first dreadnaught

The man who is responsible for creating the dreadnaught is none other than C.F. Martin, founder of the company that bears his name. He envisioned a bigger, louder guitar and took inspiration for the name from the HMS Dreadnaught, a new British warship at the time. The Dreadnaught actually lent its name not just to the guitar but to the entire class of battleships of which it was a part.

The first dreadnaught guitar was released in 1916, but interestingly, it didn’t bear the Martin name. Rather, Martin built the guitars for the Oliver Ditson Company. The Ditson line of guitars sold dismally, however, and was eventually discontinued. Players were used to smaller guitar bodies and saw no reason to switch. To make matters worse, the Ditson company itself fell on hard times and was out of business by 1920.

If at first you don’t succeed, call the marketing department

Martin may have failed in his first attempt, but he felt the dreadnaught was still a solid concept. After improving the design, he released the first large-body guitars under his own name: the D-1 (later renamed the D-18) and the D-2 (later dubbed the D-28).

Even this second round of dreadnoughts did not initially fly off the shelves, so the Martin company had to resort to drastic measures: they called the marketing department.

The 1935 Martin catalogue attempted to shine the new guitars in a more positive light. They focused on the benefits of the bassy, deep tone and the features of the guitar that made it an ideal choice for playing with a plectrum (aka guitar pick).

The strategy paid off. Soon afterward, sales of the (now) D-28 took off, and Martin never looked back. The dreadnaught guitar, and the D-28 in particular, became the standard acoustic guitar for players all over the country. Demand was so great that during the 1950s, there was a two-year wait list for a new instrument.

From dismal sales to industry standard

The dreadnaught guitar that Martin pioneered eventually became the industry norm as well. The first serious challenger in the market was Gibson’s Hummingbird guitar, released in 1960, but today any guitar company worth its salt has a dreadnaught line (including my favorite brand of acoustics, Seagull, which I lovingly call “the poor man’s Martin”).

Martin’s D-series guitars continue to be ubiquitous today. Famous players such as Billy Strings, Seth Avett, and James Taylor all play Martin dreadnaughts, and they can be found across almost all genres of popular music.

With their loudness, deep lows, rich mids, and clarity of tone, they will likely continue to be the guitars against which all other acoustics will be compared for a long time to come.

E-A-D-G-B-e.

While this may be a random assortment of letters to most people, if you play guitar you recognize them at once: standard tuning.

Almost every guitar you have ever picked up and played has been tuned this way. It’s the tuning we all learned on and the one we all just accept as “normal.”

But why is this arrangement of notes considered the standard? What makes it better than any other alternative? How did we even come to that decision?

The answer can be summed up in one word: playability.

Finding the perfect interval

Standard tuning for the guitar is based on a series of perfect fourth intervals, with one major third interval mixed in for good measure. This means that the distance in pitch between most adjacent strings is four steps of the major scale (fourth), with one pair that is only three steps apart (third).

The guitar, of course, is not the only stringed instrument (as much as guitarists want you to think it is). And other instruments in the family have different intervals between strings. The violin and cello, for instance, are both tuned in fifths. So why not guitars?

It turns out, size matters. The scale length of a violin, for example, is only around 330 mm, compared to a typical guitar scale length of 650 mm. With such a smaller neck, reaching larger intervals on a violin with your fingers is not as challenging as trying the same feat on an acoustic guitar. (If you doubt this, try to play the guitar part on Every Breath You Take. Now imagine every song being this hard.)

And even though the cello has a longer scale length than even a traditional guitar, it’s still easier to reach extended intervals because it is played vertically. The fact that guitarists must curl their wrist when playing doesn’t allow for comfortably reaching across so many frets.

To put it simply, using fourths to tune a guitar makes playing the instrument easier to play.

There’s just one problem…

So if fourths is the way to go, why not have the intervals be the same between all the strings? Why add in that pesky third between the G and B strings? After all, having the same interval between each string would make moving chords and scales around the fretboard a simple affair, because the same shapes would work everywhere.

The main issue with this approach is the fact that there are six strings. If you were to tune a guitar to all fourths, you would end up with E-A-D-G-C-f. The problem is evident — the low E string would clash with the high F string. While you could get around this problem with open chords, barre chords would be a nightmare!

The simplest solution was to change an interval to avoid the discordant E/f combination, which is exactly what happened when players added the third between the G and B strings. This brought the high and low strings back into a much nicer E/e relationship.

The result of this tuning was an instrument on which a person could play both chords and scales fairly easily, without dissonant notes or too-difficult fingerings.

Don’t worry, the Italians already figured it out

From a historical perspective, standard tuning actually dates back hundreds of years, although it probably wasn’t called by that name at the time. In the 16th century, the Italian folk guitar, or chitarra battente, had five courses (a course is a set of strings, like what’s on a modern 12-string guitar) and was tuned A-D-G-B-E.

When six-string guitars came around two hundred years later, they simply added a low E string and kept the tuning of the popular Italian chitarra, thus finding the ideal tuning solution.

In the end, it just works

The intervals between guitar strings were refined and perfected hundreds of years ago because they were simply the best choice given the overall considerations of the instrument. But that leaves one question: Why do the strings start and end with E? Why not D, C, or B?

The answer is that no one really knows. However, it seems to me that when you consider the scale length of a guitar and the ideal diameter and tension of the various strings, E to E just makes sense. Lower-pitched tunings tend to buzz and rattle, and higher-tuned strings are prone to breaking. Just like the standard intervals, it’s likely that starting and ending with E just worked the best out of all the options.

People are nothing if not practical, and standard tuning for the guitar is a perfect example of this. In the end, guitars are tuned the way they are because it just works. And while there are many different alternates and variations, standard is still the king after 400 years — and will be for the foreseeable future.

No one would ever have guessed that the sickly kid in a London hospital would become a pioneer in rock and roll and work with such legends as Pete Townshend and Jimi Hendrix.

Yet Jim Marshall would grow up to found the amplifier company that bore his name and defined the sound of rock for generations.

Growing up sick

James Charles Marshall was born in London in the early 1920s. Much of his childhood was spent in a hospital bed, as he suffered from tuberculosis in his bones.

While he eventually overcame this disease, it was still enough to exempt him from service as a young man in WWII. Instead, Jim began a career as an electrical engineer and moonlighted as a musician.

Combining engineering and music

Initially, he was a singer for a local band, but in 1942 the band’s drummer was called into active service. As a result, Jim started playing the drum set to cover — while still maintaining his singing duties.

This led to a problem, though. Marshall had a quiet singing voice that was difficult to hear above his own drumming. With his background as an engineer, he started building his own portable PA systems to amplify his voice.

Teaching and opening the shop

In the 1950s, Marshall took up teaching the drums and at one point had close to 65 students showing up each week. He later stated that his significant teaching income enabled him to save up enough money to go into business.

This happened in 1960, when Jim opened a music store in London that catered to drummers. The store was popular with the local drumming community, and soon they were bringing their guitarists along with them to the shop.

The local rock bands absolutely loved Marshall because he treated them with respect. Other London music stores focused their efforts on jazz musicians and looked down upon the rock community, but Jim treated everyone equally. They were so enamored by him, in fact, that guitarists started asking him to sell guitars and amps so they could buy them at his shop.

Creating the first Marshall amp

Jim Marshall sensed an opportunity. At the behest of guitar players like Ritchie Blackmore and Pete Townshend, he assembled a small team of engineers and began working on the first Marshall amp prototype.

They started with a Fender Bassman, and after six(!) iterations, they had a product they were happy with. Their goal was to create quality amps at a more affordable price than the competition, which was not the easiest task given post-War England’s limited electrical components. They resorted to using parts such as airplane vacuum tubes but were still able to achieve the sound they wanted.

Townshend loved the finished product and began using Marshall amps with The Who. The amps soon took off in popularity, with even Jimi Hendrix visiting the shop in the late 1960s to place an order.

From shed to mass production

At the time, Marshall’s “pie in the sky” goal was to make and sell 50 amplifiers, but that number was quickly surpassed. Marshall was eventually able to move production from a shed in his yard to a more proper factory setup, where of course today the British company operates a multi-million-pound business.

Far more than a businessman

Jim Marshall was far more than just a maker of cheap amps. Many rock stars of the ’70s and ’80s called him “the father of loud,” or more simply, “Dad.” His customer service and care for people as individuals was unsurpassed.

Slash once fondly noted in an interview that Jim designed a brand-new amp for him after his were all destroyed in a concert riot in 1991, saying, “He took great care of me personally, ever since we first met.”

Marshall supported more than just the music community too. Over the years he quietly donated millions of pounds to charities and other causes, including the Royal National Orthopedic Hospital — the very facility where he was treated for tuberculosis as a child.

The “father of loud” had the love and adoration of many in the music community and in his home country of England for his selflessness, service, and care. In 2003, he was awarded an OBE from Buckingham Palace, one of the top civic honors in the country, for his “services to the music industry and to charity.”

The passing of a legend

Jim Marshall died of cancer in 2012, almost exactly 50 years after he made his first amplifier. Musicians from across the globe paid their respects on social media. It was quite the fitting end for this pioneer of rock music who was loved by all — and for good reason.

Long before PRS guitars became the mainstream brand that it is today, Paul Reed Smith was just another luthier, living in the Baltimore area, and hoping for his big break.

Carlos Santana, on the other hand, was a guitar god and household name with exacting demands on his band, his crew, and his guitars.

When the two met, history was made. But it wasn’t easy.

Paul Reed Smith, small-time luthier

In the 1970s, Paul had honed his craft, making his guitars by hand and selling them to musicians. He made a deal with each artist he built a guitar for: if they didn’t absolutely fall in love with the guitar, they didn’t have to buy it. He was so good, however, that this was seldom if ever an issue.

By this time, he had built custom guitars for clients such as Al DiMeola, Ted Nugent, and Howard Leese. While these were certainly talented musicians, the luthier he needed more star power to really grow his business.

Around that time he found out that Carlos Santana, one of the biggest acts of the ’70s, was playing a show near Baltimore. Paul went to work.

Carlos Santana, big-time rock star

He built Santana a custom guitar, went to the show, and gave it to one of the crew members to take to the rock star. A few minutes passed, and the crew member came back to take Paul to the guitarist.

Carlos was playing the guitar backstage and seemingly loved it. He ordered a custom electric with curly maple top on the spot, but he wanted to play the guitar Paul brought in the show that night to verify it could handle the stage.

At the concert, Santana strapped Paul’s guitar on and began to play. After just a few notes, however, he ripped off the guitar in disgust and performed the rest of the song with another instrument.

After the show, Santana complained to Paul Reed Smith that his guitar didn’t sound good through the live rig and told him, “The deal’s off.” Paul begged and pleaded Santana to give him another chance, blaming the pickup in the guitar for the issue. Reluctantly, Santana agreed.

“An accident of God”

Rather than build Carlos a new guitar, however, Smith called Howard Leese (from the band Heart) and asked if he would lend Santana his guitar. Howard said yes, and the guitar went off to Santana.

Paul called Santana’s tech a few days later and discovered that the guitarist loved the guitar and wanted to keep it. He tried to explain that the guitar was borrowed, but to no avail. Carlos came to the phone and informed Paul that he would give the first guitar back, but not this one — it was too good.

Paul later stated he told him, “This was an accident of God; we’re done…except I need a spare. Maybe one with a tone control knob.”

When the new guitar was finished, he brought it to Carlos’s show. His tech gave it to Carlos during sound check. He could not tell that this was a new guitar until he looked down and say the new tone knob — it felt and played identically to like the first one. “Another accident of God,” he said. And then he proceeded to order another new guitar.

Paul Reed Smith: bonafide guitar maker

He subsequently ordered several more guitars from Paul, and after the fifth one, he finally told Paul, “Okay, you’re a guitar maker.”

Paul Reed Smith earned Santana’s respect the old-fashioned way — with lots of hard work and superb quality. That respect paid dividends to both men. Santana received upper-echelon-quality guitars, and PRS found its superstar.

Paul and Carlos became friends and supporters of each other after that. Santana played PRS guitars from the late 1970s onward, while Paul launched his now-famous company.

The PRS Santana signature guitar

In the mid 1990s, the two men worked together to finally release Carlos’ guitar to the public. The original model was only offered from 1995 to 1998, but the Santana line of guitars still continue to roll off the production line to this day.

Paul says that Carlos made him earn his respect, but once he got it, Carlos became his biggest fan. Smith has stated that Santana calls him every Christmas to thank him for his work, and he sends him flowers on his birthday.

Although the two men’s relationship started out rocky, their combined love of music and high-quality guitars helped start one of the top brands on the market today. PRS players around the world — and I’m one of them — owe a debt of gratitude to what these men have accomplished.

When I was in college, I worked a summer job and saved up enough money to buy a nice, new guitar. I was in Joplin, MO, at the time, and I wandered into a local music store.

Little did I know that would be the day I fell in love.

There was a six-string acoustic guitar with a cutaway on display. I walked up and played it, and boy, did it feel good. It had a nice, rich tone as well. The more I played it, the more I didn’t want to put it down. I looked at the headstock and saw a bird on it. The brand was Seagull, a company I’d never heard of before. Nevertheless, I had to have that guitar.

Robert Godin

Seagull was the brainchild of Canadian guitar maker Robert Godin. Godin grew up (and still lives) in Quebec. He began making guitars in 1972 as a way to act on his passion for good music and craftsmanship. Over the next decade, he was able to parlay his small shop in rural Quebec into a solid guitar company, Godin Guitars, which is now one of the largest guitar manufacturers in North America — but one many musicians are still unfamiliar with, unfortunately.

In many ways, Robert Godin might be considered the Canadian Paul Reed Smith. In interviews, Robert’s dedication to and passion about making the absolute best guitars is immediately apparent. Like Paul Reed Smith, he obsesses over every aspect of his guitars and the processes by which they are made. And much like PRS, people who have played or owned a Godin rarely if ever have any complaints.

Godin family brands

In 1982, Godin branched out and started manufacturing acoustic guitars under the Seagull brand. Seagull was started to build affordable, high-quality solid wood acoustics. Mine was the Seagull brand’s flagship, the S6. (I lost that guitar a number of years ago but have since replaced it with an Artist Series, the higher-end counterpart to the S6.)

In the years that followed, Godin has branched out with other brands as well. Norman, Art & Lutherie, and Simon and Patrick are all additional acoustic guitar brands the company has started. (Fun fact: Simon and Patrick are the names of Robert’s sons.) They also make classical guitars under the La Patrie brand. These brands, like Seagull, offer a variety of guitars from entry level to high end.

The company also still sells guitars under the original Godin brand. Godin guitars are mid-to-high-end electrics. I personally have a Godin Progression Plus, a Stratocaster-type guitar, that in my opinion rivals any American-made Fender. And I bought it used for under $600! They have standard electric guitars and also guitars equipped with piezo pickups, MIDI outputs, and more.

Godin features

Godin guitars (and their family brands) generally share some common features.

First of all, as I’ve mentioned, Godin’s quality is excellent across the board. Even their “entry level” guitars have great fretwork, finish, and overall craftsmanship.

Second, their fretboards tend to have a different feel than other brands. Many of their guitars offer a fretboard radius of between 12 and 14 inches, as opposed to a typical Fender radius of 9.5 inches. They also often put a wider nut on their guitars, especially the acoustics. This wider nut (and therefore neck) is designed to help make finger picking easier, but it also helps players like me who have large hands. This combination tends to make the necks much easier to play, at least for me.

Third, and most importantly in my opinion, they simply blow away the competition at their price points. As I mentioned, my Progression Plus feels like a guitar worth two or three times as much. I can say the same for my Artist Series, which I bought used for around $500. I’ve picked up $1000 Martins and Taylors that didn’t sound as good as my guitar. And the same is true for others, based on reviews I’ve seen over the years.

A great brand in so many ways

Robert Godin has truly built a great company and brand over the last 50 years. His guitars offer North American-made quality at a very reasonable price. They’ve also leaned into sustainable business practices — they literally grow and harvest their own wood in their own forest. And, of course, they provide hundreds of jobs to the fine people of Quebec.

There is a lot more you can learn about this great but relatively unknown brand, but my suggestion to you is if you ever get the chance to pick one up, do yourself a favor. But you’d better have your wallet handy!

In the 1950s, guitarists had a problem.

With the advent of amplification and the first electric guitars, the instruments were for the first time able to play above the rest of a band in a live performance. This changed the way guitars were played: the instruments could now be featured front and center. The lead guitar was born.

Wanted: the best of both worlds

Solid-body guitars like the new Fender Stratocaster or Gibson’s Les Paul were well suited for playing lead guitar. The fact that their bodies were solid wood allowed them to be turned up loud without on-stage issues cropping up. The tone, however, was brighter with more treble than other guitars of the day.

Hollow-body guitars like Gibson’s ES-330, on the other hand, had large, resonate bodies that gave the instruments a desirable, warm tone. But that increased resonance lead to feedback problems when amped up. (This was, of course, well before people like Jimi Hendrix learned use feedback as a musical technique.)

Guitar players at that time wanted the best of both worlds: a dark, warm tone without feedback during live performances.

Enter Ted McCarty.

Ted McCarty, problem solver

Ted McCarty was the CEO of Gibson. McCarty was one of the truly great guitar innovators and came up with such great Gibson guitars as the Les Paul, the SG, the Flying V, and the Explorer. He had a knack for problem-solving when it came to guitar design.

McCarty listened to guitarists’ complaints and began work. He came up with an idea to find a middle ground. To do this, he created a guitar that was neither totally hollow nor totally solid.

The ES-335, which debuted in 1958, became the world’s first semi-hollowbody guitar. McCarty’s design called for a solid block of maple to run through the center of the body, with hollow, resonate “wings” attached to either side. He also incorporated cutouts in the upper bouts to allow for access to higher frets and F-holes.

The guitar was an instant success, as it delivered on the need of a warmer tone with very little feedback. It quickly became one of Gibson’s top-selling guitars, and in fact it has been in continuous production since its debut over 60 years ago.

Famous ES-335 players

Over the years, the Gibson ES-335 has been used by many famous musicians. Chuck Berry was one of the first big stars to use the guitar to great effect with his new “rock and roll” style. (An additional tie-in with Chuck Berry can be found in the movie Back to the Future, where Marty McFly plays — you guessed it — an ES-335 at the dance with Chuck’s cousin’s band.)

Perhaps the most famous ES-335 player was B.B. King, whose trademark guitar, Lucille, was a version of the guitar that featured a maple neck instead of the standard mahogany and lacked F-holes.

Almost as famous is Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl, who plays a beautiful blue variation of the guitar that has a Firebird headstock and diamond-shaped holes.

The ES-335 has had enormous appeal to guitar players over the decades, and Gibson currently has over 25 different 335s in production.

Imitation — still the highest form of flattery

McCarty’s revolutionary semi-hollow-body design, of course, has been copied many times. Notable brands with their own versions include:

• Fender (Thinline Telecaster)
• Ibanez (Artcore series)
• Rickenbacker 330 (the brand’s top-selling guitar)

Success is being in the right place at the right time

The Gibson ES-335, which occupies a special place in the history of guitar and rock and roll, was a needed advancement in the electric guitar that came about at the right time. The fact that the design has endured and been copied many times over is a testament to how amazing this guitar actually is.

You know Eddie Van Halen as the rock guitar god that he was. You may know him as the tinkerer who built his Frankenstrat piece by piece. You may even know him as the guy who pioneered using attenuators on amplifiers.

But did you know that he was also a bit of a mad scientist?

That’s right, Edward Lodewijk van Halen: rock star by day, serial inventor by night. Okay, maybe that’s the other way around. But the point still stands — EVH held multiple US patents.

Look, Ma, no hands!

The most well-known invention — besides the Frankenstrat — Eddie created was Patent No. 4,656,917. This device was a flip-out support system that could be attached to a guitar. It was basically a support that rested against the guitarist’s body and provided a solid foundation for the guitar.

Eddie came up with the idea to facilitate the tapping technique he popularized (but ironically didn’t invent!). The device positioned the guitar strings up, allowing the player to use both hands to play the instrument almost like a piano.

While Eddie certainly used tapping to an extreme in his music, it’s hard to know if he ever used his invention. At least, I couldn’t find any evidence that he did.

The tension is killing me

Eddie wasn’t satisfied with just one invention. Another EVH creation was Patent No. US7183475B2. This was a specialized tailpiece for a guitar that could alter string tension for an individual string.

Simply put, the tailpiece had a small lever with two settings or positions. In the first position, the string is tuned normally. When the level is moved to the second position, the string tension lessens, and a lower note sounds.

The easiest way to think about this to imagine you installed it on your guitar with the lever controlling the low E string. You would be able to change from standard to dropped D tuning literally with the flip of a switch.

Interestingly, many decades before Van Halen came up with this idea, banjoist Earl Scruggs used a mechanism on his instrument’s headstock to achieve a similar idea.

Why not pick up another patent, Eddie?

A third patent that Eddie had his hands in was Patent No. US20180102121A1, a unique humbucker pickup design. The design was actually created by a team of people, of whom EVH was one.

The main difference between this humbucker and any other is the orientation of the coils, which are turned on their sides as compared to “normal” pickups.

Unfortunately, the patent application seems not to explain the advantages of this method, and I’m not aware of any guitar ever having used this pickup.

(They also filed an application for USD817385S1, which was the ornamental design for the pickup.)

His legacy lives on

While sadly, we lost Eddie in 2020, his legacy lives on — not only in his music, but also with his inventions and patents.

RIP, Eddie.

Steve Vai. Kirk Hammett (Metallica). Larry LaLonde (Primus). David Bryson (Counting Crows).

Each of these musicians is a guitarist par excellence. Each has achieved some measure of fame and success — far more than most of us — and is a professional at the top of their craft. But they each share one commonality: they all had the same guitar teacher.

That teacher was none other than Joe Satriani.

But Joe has done more than just influence some of the biggest names in rock. He is a guitar virtuoso in his own right. He recently released his eighteenth album, he’s been nominated for 15 Grammys, and he is the bestselling rock guitar instrumentalist of all time.

Growing up Joe

Joe was born on Long Island, NY, in 1956 and is of Italian heritage. In fact, his grandparents — both sets — were born in Italy.

You might think that little Joe picked up the guitar at a young age and the rest was history, but that’s actually not what happened.

Instead, he actually began his musical journey on the drums, which he started playing at age nine. After a few years drumming, though, he became frustrated with his lack of progress and stopped practicing.

The fates would align, however, on September 18, 1970, when the now-teenager learned that Jimi Hendrix had died. At the news, Joe decided to start playing the guitar.

Learning and teaching

“Satch” spent four years learning the guitar before seeking out Billy Bauer and Lennie Tristano, two jazz musicians, to really dig into the study of music. Tristano was an especially demanding teacher, something Joe took note of and incorporated into his own teaching style.

One of his first students was Steve Vai, a fellow Long Islander who even went to the same high school as Joe. In fact, they’ve continued to be close friends over the years and play and tour together as often as they can.

Vai has gone on record stating that Satch was a very demanding teacher, and that if he did not practice the lesson from the week before sufficiently, Joe would make him use the lesson time to practice by himself, while Satriani would go off to eat a sandwich.

From the late 1970s through the mid-1980s, Joe taught guitar while pursuing a career in music. He moved to Berkeley, CA, during this time, and it was there that he taught many of his famous students, including Kirk Hammett, David Bryson, Alex Skolnick (Testament), Kevin Cadogan (Third Eye Blind), and many others.

Stardom and surfing with aliens

Joe released his first album in 1986, but it was his second album in 1987, Surfing with the Alien, that rocketed him to previously unknown success. It was the highest instrumental album on the charts in many years, and it got him constant radio airplay.

He continued to release successful albums, and in 1993 he was asked to temporarily join British rock legends Deep Purple, who needed to replace the recently departed Ritchie Blackmore. Satriani was a hit with both the band and audiences and was asked to join full time, but he declined because of other recording obligations he had.

G3 and Chickenfoot

Satch’s career and influence continued to grow in 1996 when he founded G3, a regular series of concerts — that are still going to this day — featuring some of the top rock guitarists on a single stage. Many rock stars have joined Joe on stage, including Vai, Eric Johnson, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, and John Petrucci.

In 2008, Joe joined the supergroup Chickenfoot, composed of Sammy Hagar, Michael Anthony, and Chad Smith. They have recorded several albums together.

Satch facts

If you are a die-hard Joe Satriani fan, you probably were already familiar with most of his story. In fact, you may not have even learned anything new about Satch to this point.

So for the true super fans, here are some bonus Satch facts you may not have known:

• Joe played guitar on Spinal Tap’s 1992 album, Break Like the Wind
• Satriani has been in several movies, including For Your Consideration and Moneyball
• Joe’s favorite albums of all time include So (Peter Gabriel), Electric Ladyland (Jimi Hendrix), Exile on Main Street (Rolling Stones), and Please Please Me (Beatles)
• Joe wrote an autobiography in 2014 called Strange Beautiful Music
• Satch is an avid painter who finished over 100 paintings during the COVID lockdowns

Joe Satriani has done more to influence rock and roll than just about anyone else. And at 65, he is still recording new music, looking forward to touring again, and most importantly, enjoying himself all the while.

The last few years have seen a rise in the seven-string guitar. YouTube is filled with technical virtuosos showing the range of this type of guitar, and seven-strings can be found in many progressive rock and heavy metal bands.

While it may seem like the extended-range guitar is a relative newcomer to the music scene, in fact its roots go back more than 200 years.

Classical seven-string guitars

While guitars, and their precursors, lutes, have been made for many hundreds of years, there was a technological innovation in around 1800 that changed the game. That innovation was the invention of metal-wire strings.

Metal strings were more durable and produced a louder sound than their traditional gut counterparts. This allowed luthiers to experiment with dropping double-course instruments in favor of single-course ones. Guitars with six strings became common and then the accepted norm, as it remains today.

But there were players and composers who wanted to extend the musical range of the guitar, so luthiers accommodated by designing guitars with additional strings. Hence the seven-string classical guitar was born, and although somewhat rare, they are still sold today.

Jazz seven-string guitars

Around 100 years after the seven-string classical came on the scene, the jazz guitarist George Van Eps became the first person to put an extended-range guitar to a more modern use.

Van Eps contracted with Epiphone to build a seven-string jazz guitar in the 1930s. Many decades later, in the sixties, Gretsch built the Van Eps signature guitar, which was likely the first production model seven-string.

After Van Eps, other jazz guitarists of the day began using and experimenting with adding an extra string.

Up to this point, however, all of these guitars were hollow-bodies and arch-tops. The first solid-body seven-string guitar would not come about until the 1980s.

Solid-body seven-string guitars

Guitarist Lenny Breau, a Canadian-American who played a blend of many styles of music, worked with a luthier to create the first such solid-body guitar, which they then debuted at the 1983 NAMM show. This, however, was a one-off that did not gain much traction.

The same can be said for a Fender seven-string just a few years later that never made it past the prototype stage.

The real advent of the solid-body seven-string guitar was the Ibanez UV7, a signature model made for none other than rock legend Steve Vai. Vai would go on to use the guitar on Whitesnake’s Slip of the Tongue and his solo album, Passion & Warfare.

Much like his classical predecessors in the 1800s, Vai wanted to extend the range of his guitars and playing. He first experimented with adding a high A string, but it was too prone to breaking. He substituted a low B string, and the now-standard tuning was born.

Ibanez put the UV7 into production in 1990. The model did not sell well, but Vai encouraged the company to keep making them, even if they only sold a few each year.

Then, in 1994, the breakthrough happened. Korn released their debut album, Korn, which heavily featured the UV7. Vai later stated that when he heard them on the radio, he instinctively knew they were using his signature Ibanez.

The rise of Korn led to the prominence of the seven-string guitar, which has since become a staple in the progressive rock and heavy metal genres.

From classical guitar to jazz, rock, and heavy metal, the seven-string guitar has been there all along. It doesn’t have the popularity of its six-string cousin, and it probably never will, but it certainly has its own place in the history of music.

If you’ve ever seen an electric guitar that just looks a little…strange…you might have just been staring at a Teisco.

Some of the hallmarks of Teisco design are funky angles, lots of pickups (up to four!), and knobs and switches galore.

While these guitars are sought after in the vintage market today, they didn’t start out that way. Instead, they were Japanese-made budget guitars meant to attract buyers who couldn’t afford a brand like Fender.

The beginnings of Teisco guitars

Teisco started life as a partnership between Atsuwo Kaneko, a Hawaiian and Spanish guitarist, and an electrical engineer, Dory Matsuda. Originally the company was named Aoi Onpa Kenkyujo, which means Electricity Laboratories. The name was changed to Nippon Onpa Kogyo Company in 1956 before they finally settled on Teisco in 1964.

(Many sources claim the name Teisco was an acronym for Tokyo Electric Instrument and Sound Company, but Kaneko was on record stating that this wasn’t true — he just liked the way the name sounded.)

They began building guitars and other musical instruments in Japan in 1946, and initially their products were only sold domestically.

Coming to America (and the UK)

That changed in around 1960, when brokers began to import them into the US and the UK. These brokers would then rebrand the guitars before selling them in music stores, Sears, and even pawn shops. Common new “brands” included Teisco Del Rey (it was thought that adding a Spanish-sounding name would increase sales), Kay, and Silvertone (another still well-known brand).

The appeal of these guitars was price. They were affordable, costing as little as $20 and up to $150, compared to a new Stratocaster, which in 1965 went for a cool $200. For a kid saving his allowance money, or a mom and dad with not a lot of disposable income, they were a great alternative to a name-brand guitar.

Features and issues

As the 1960s progressed, so too did the uniqueness of Teisco guitars. They became known for especially strange body shapes. Some models, such as the Checkmate 4, had four pickups instead of the normal one-to-three. They often came with a wide array of switches and knobs to change the sound of the guitar in myriad ways.

While they had plenty of eye appeal, what they lacked was playability. Being budget guitars, they had issues with intonation, very basic hardware, and plastic nuts. They were meant for players just learning the instrument, not people shredding solos at the twelfth fret and beyond.

The end of the production era

Teisco was bought out by Kawai Musical Instruments Manufacturing Company in 1967, and the new owners phased out Teisco guitars in 1969, while still continuing to use the name to sell keyboards until the ‘80s.

In 2018, a Singaporean company acquired the rights to the name Teisco and began selling effects pedals under the brand.

The beginning of the vintage era

Over the years, Teisco has become a sought-after brand in the vintage guitar market. Undoubtedly the unique characteristics of the guitars made them valuable collector pieces, but nostalgia has probably helped as well, as players who started with the brand as kids now had the means as adults to collect them.

Today, you can buy a vintage Teisco on Reverb for as little as a few hundred to as much as a few thousand dollars.

Famous Teisco players

There is a long list of players who have picked up a Teisco. A few of the more famous examples include:

Eddie Van Halen. Yes, that’s right — the guitar god himself started learning on a Teisco ET-440.

Glen Campell. The guitarist’s main axe in the 1960s was a Teisco T-60.

Dan Auerbach. The Black Key’s guitarist and singer often uses Teiscos for studio work.

So the next time you’re thinking about getting a new guitar (and let’s be honest, when are you not thinking about getting a new guitar?), why not add something unique to your collection like a vintage Teisco?

Photo attributions:

MJ-2L: , Teisco_MJ-2L.jpg: Cortney Martin from Houston, TX, USASideshow_Tramps_1,_New_Year’s_Eve,_Houston,_2009.jpg: Cortney MartinGuy_Forsyth,_New_Years_Eve,_Houston,_2009.jpg: Cortney Martin from Houston, TX, USAderivative work: Guitarpop, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Teisco_Spectrum_2_or_22_(SN374919).jpg: T Hderivative work: Clusternote, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Teisco May Queen (c.1968) & Ibanez unidentified bass (2017–11 by Alexander Lesnitsky @Pixabay 2878686).png: Alexander Lesnitsky from Moscow, Russiaderivative work: User:Clusternote, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons