zZounds Live: Your Own Personal Gnarly Rodent: The JHS PackRat Distortion
How many gnarly rodents can you stuff into a stompbox? The JHS PackRat features nine rodent-style distortion versions all available on a single knob. Think replication, not emulation. When JHS founder Josh Scott crafted the original prototypes of the PackRat, he examined 45 different versions of the famous rodent-style stompbox. Now with the JHS PackRat, […]
zZounds Live: J. Rockett Audio’s El Hombre Overdrive Takes Your Tone to Texas
J. Rockett Audio crafts incredibly useful effects that tend to stick around on pedalboards for the long haul. The J. Rockett El Hombre overdrive will be sticking to your board in no time with its classic “Texas-style” overdrive that captures all the nuances of your tone with incredible touch sensitivity. Alter your drive style with […]
Part 4: Predictions for What’s Next
Well, here we are. After interpreting the history of the electric guitar, questioning what happened to rock music, and examining the state of the guitar industry, there's just one thing left to do.
Bridge The Gap: Bridge Writing Tips
When you listen to a song, you’re taken on a journey of ups, downs, twists, and turns. The bridge is a great place to make some of these twists and turns happen! This section is not necessary for every song, but it can help add narrative and/or color layers. Continuing in our songwriting series, we […]
Part 3: State of the Guitar Industry
As we attempt to predict the electric guitar's future, let's place a stethoscope on the heart of the industry behind it. By parsing statistical sales data and trends, as well as the observations and opinions of experts and stakeholders, we will get a sales-driven view of how successful the electric guitar is today.
zZounds Live: Do It Live with Yamaha’s YC Series Keyboard (and Brother Paul Brown)
Don’t simulate – recreate all the essential instruments necessary for the gigging keyboardist. Yamaha YC series stage keyboards feature a proprietary VCM engine that captures all the subtleties of acoustic and electronic pianos, organs, and more, right down to their circuitry. Find out what it all means as Yamaha’s Brother Paul Brown (current member of […]
Part 2: Guitar is Off the Charts
When the electric guitar was pronounced dead a few years back, would-be coroners were quick to identify one of the main causes: the languid state of American rock music. This was a bitter blow: the electric guitar and American rock music grew up together, each helping to influence and refine the other over time, as we saw in Part 1.
This Breedlove Abides: Jeff Bridges Organic Concert is Sustainable and Resonant
When I first caught wind that there was going to be a collaboration between Breedlove and Jeff Bridges, it just made complete sense. With Bridges’ advocacy for sustainability and Breedlove’s push toward becoming one of the greenest guitar companies on the planet, it was a marriage made in heaven. Adorning a solid torrefied European spruce […]
The Future of the Electric Guitar
You’ve probably heard that the electric guitar is dead, or at best, on life support. It’s true that the industry and culture behind it have seen plenty of challenges and changes in the last few years, but what does the future of this instrument look like?
This four-part series interprets the past, examines the present, and predicts The Future of the Electric Guitar.
