A 1990 Gibson SG '61 Custom came into my possession last year. Upon spending some time with the SG, which acoustically sounded phenomenal, I decided the pickups needed an upgrade.

The stock pickups didn't sound as bad as they did on my 1990 Les Paul Standard. Those pickups we shall never talk about again! I would have felt bad sending them to be recycled even. If I were a man of resources, I would have purchased s ticket on Elon Musks' rocket to dispense the stock LP pickups into space far away from the hands of guitarists.

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been testing out the new Reactovator pedal from Hagerman. I was excited to try the Reactivator as it's an entirely new design for a tube pedal. But, unfortunately, although it's similar in topology (solid-state boost into valve overdrive into the solid-state buffer) to a BK Butler Tube Driver, that's where the similarities end.

Here is a little info from the Hagerman website:

During the early days of TV, if a picture tube grew dim, servicemen could perform a trick called "reactivation," where heater voltage was overdriven to the point of regenerating a poisoned cathode, thus restoring brightness. That's where the name of this pedal comes from! Increasing power from 9V to 12V adds another 6dB of gain for even higher performance.

For many decades guitarists would walk into a studio or gig and put their guitar amp on the floor without putting much thought into it. Sometimes, a guitarist would need to hear their guitar more so they would place their amp on an amp road case, chair, wooden box, or anything lying around.

There was little thought about how the guitar amp reacts sitting on a floor or on top of a road case. Guitarists would notice issues with the sound of their amp from gig to gig but often chalked that up to the venue or other circumstances.

Guitarists are searching for solutions to get a great tone in their home studios or on quieter gigs. Higher wattage amps are falling out of favor for these situations.

Bigger amps are harder to control at lower volumes and only saturate when played loud.

Many guitarists have tried products like the Kemper or Fractal as well as amp simulators. There are a wide variety of products today aimed at the volume restrained guitarist.

I have struggled with each of these products when dialing in a guitar amp tone I love. I find myself spending more time tweaking then playing. While mixing, I keep going back to make adjustments I wouldn't bother with a real amp.

The Bnson Echorec delay is a sound that many guitarists have heard but aren't aware of its identity. There is an assumption that anything before digital or analog delays are tape-based echos.

Tape echos such as the Maestro Ecoplex were produced in quantity and more available in the USA. Italian inventor Dr. Bini designed the Echorec to solve some of the issues known with a tape delay.

My first memory of a Dan Electro guitar is watching footage of Led Zeppelin from the Knebworth concert in 1979. I was intrigued by the unique look with the black body and white pickguard.

The pickups also caught my eye. They seemed to have a visual similarity to Telecaster neck pickups, but they weren't an exact match.

I decided to research Dan Electro guitars, which was a little more time-consuming than it is in modern times. Now Google is always at our fingertips.

Upon some digging and asking local guitarists about Dan Electro guitars, I stumbled upon the Sears catalog line of guitars called Silvertone.

When a lot of guitarists start recording themselves, they often complain about a tonal blanket hanging over their tone. I get asked frequently about the best ways to remove the dull blanket sound.

There are several ways to make a guitar more lively. Firstly, I try to start with the instrument itself. If I'm playing acoustic guitar, I will pick one that suits the tonality of the song. The same goes for an electric guitar and amp.

Concerning guitar amps, I spend time tweaking the EQ knobs on the amp itself. I'm not opposed to adding EQ down the line, but I want to get the tone as close as possible from the start.

You may have made the right decisions with the guitar and amp but still find you need to open up the tone.

I spend a lot of time on stage and in the studio. Because of this, I'm always thinking about my guitar tone. For most recordings, I engineer myself. This means I have to be pretty aware of how my sound gets captured.

This goes one step further these days as I also happen to be mixing all of the music I compose. I also mix a good portion of the music I produce with other artists.

Dealing with guitar at every stage of the process, from stage to recording to mixing, has given me a broad perspective of EQ.

I thought I would share some of my findings on the subject of guitar EQ—one thing to remember about getting a tone that it's merely an audio opinion. There are many ways you can approach sound. You can watch five guitarists or engineers talk about guitar tone, and each has a different approach.

Compression is one of the most confusing effects to incorporate into your guitar chain. It’s a misunderstood effect.

What a compressor actually does isn’t all that confusing. The difficulty is in its application.

Let’s start at the beginning. A compressor’s purpose is to even out your guitar’s signal. With a clean guitar, you will see peaks in the recorded sound. Lots of peaks and valleys. The transients pop out. The difference between those peaks and valleys could sound jarring or cause overload, depending on what you’re running your signal into.

Compressors were invented to reduce the distance between peaks and valleys. This allows for a more consistent sound and has benefits like preventing tape output from overloading and digital output from clipping.

Sound Toys plugins have been a staple for many recording engineers and mixers for quite some time. But for some reason, I just didn't end up trying them until recently. 

I dropped by my friend and film composer Gene Back's studio. We were discussing plugins, and I was mentioning how I was generally dissatisfied with delay plugins. I just haven't bonded with any.

I'll admit that I'm an analog delay nut. Although some companies have made emulations of old delays, I've been unsatisfied.

Gene suggested I try Echo Boy from Soundtoys. I had heard of EchoBoy before but was jaded using delay plugins. After some not so gentle judging from my friend, I tried EchoBoy.

There is a new phrase being thrown around in the guitar community. I hear the term Pedal Platform amp a lot. I believe some of the pedal community are perpetuating this phrase. There seems to be a particular crew of pedal manufacturers that see pedals as being the core of their tone. 

There isn't anything wrong with this per se. However, I will expect that many who go down this path will still be experiencing an anemic guitar tone.

I just released a new single from my band Future Relics, a surf/sci-fi inspired instrumental project.

The direct inspiration for the music of Future Relics is movie scores from the 1950s,1960s, and 1970s. Each song is based on an imaginary film that could have come out during that time period.Here is the backstory of “The Cheat”

The year is 1968. A modern-day Robin Hood has just landed in Las Vegas. HIs plan: to cheat the cheaters from their swindled fortunes. But no plan goes without glitches. The song’s underlying question is, when does good become evil? Find out in “The Cheat.”

It would be fair to say that in certain periods of music history, both past and present, chorus has been one of the most popular guitar effects. 

Chorus is most notably associated with the 1980s but really got its start back in the 1960s. The Beatles were the first to use ADT (artificial double tracking), which to the ear sounds like a light chorus or doubling effect, on “Rubber Soul.”

In fact, chorus is meant to sound like more than one source playing at once. Like a chorus of singers. It’s an electronic way of doubling your guitar or any other instrument.