Eric Johnson | Birthday Tribute!

Born 17th August 1954, Eric Johnson is 56 today!

1966 Marshall Super Lead Plexi Head Owned by Eric Johnson on eBay!

The sellers of this fine 1966 Marshall Super Lead Plexi head were at first a bit coy as to who the celebrity owner actually was, showing us only a partial signature on the handwritten letter of authenticity.  I'm digging Eric Johnson's cursive penmanship!     

The listing for this particular amp has ended, but what the hey, better late than never I always say.

eBay Item number: 230500114170

The sellers also have what is possibly an authentic Jimi Hendrix owned Marshall JTM45, serial number 7026 on their website which you can check out here!

Eric Johnson Talks About His New Signature Stratocaster

Fender has just released this great video of Eric Johnson talking about his new signature Stratocaster. 

According to Eric, the bound rosewood fingerboard on this signature model was inspired by a run of Stratocasters in 1965 that appeared briefly with fingerboard binding. 

I'm not sure if I could get used to seeing a Strat with fingerboard binding, but if the body edges were squared off and bound as well that would be a different story -- Strat-in-a-tuxedo territory baby!

Other player friendly features on the EJ RW include a 12 inch fingerboard radius, jumbo frets, pickups wound a littler hotter and custom voiced by Eric Johnson himself and staggered tuners that eliminate the need for string-trees and potential tuning hangups.  Interestingly also, the neck was modelled after Johnson's favorite vintage '62 rosewood neck Strat.  Finish the two-piece alder body and neck in Fender's thin-skin nitrocellulose finish and you have one serious tone machine!

It's always a joy to watch Eric play, and if we are to believe what we're seeing, Johnson is getting his trademark 100 lb violin tone out of what looks a little vintage tweed 'narrow panel' Fender Champ -- after being routed through his extensive pedalboard offscreen at left of course!

Check out this link for Eric Johnson's Guitar Setup Secrets Part 2!

Joe Satriani's Experience Hendrix 2010 Guitars Revealed!

The folks at Premier Guitar have detailed Joe Satriani's pedalboard and amp setup as well the single-coil equipped prototype Ibanez JS custom axes he used for the recent Experience Hendrix 2010 tour!

Satch also talks about his switch to Marshall heads from his signature Peavey JSX's for both Chickenfoot and Experience Hendrix.

“At the start of the Chickenfoot tour, I noticed that my Peavey JSX rig sounded more specialized for someone playing lead guitar all night.  I had Marshall send me some different stuff to try out in Vienna, and I ended up using a JVM410 for the rest of the tour. It made such a profound difference, because I’m playing rhythm guitar most of the time in that band.  I was shocked to find that using a Vox Satchurator into a Marshall 6100 Anniversary head’s clean channel was really the best sound." 

Satriani tonehounds take note.

But it doesn't stop there!  Those resourceful PG folks also give us a great all access view of  the guitars and gear of Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Jonny Lang, Susan Tedeschi, Robert Randolph and Vernon Reid. 

And not forgetting of course Eric Johnson's particularly quirky setup complete with specific wooden folding chair on which he places his Marshall head for the ultimate in tone! 

http://www.premierguitar.com/Magazine/Issue/2010/Jun/Axes_Bold_as_Love_The_Gear_of_Experience_Hendrix_Tour_2010.aspx?Page=1

(Pic and Quote Source:  http://www.premierguitar.com/)

Experience Hendrix 2010 Tour Dates Announced

The Experience Hendrix 2010 tour is set to kick-off in March with an all-star lineup including Joe Satriani, Jonny Lang, Eric Johnson, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Brad Whitford, Doyle Bramhall II, Ernie Isley, Living Colour, Double Trouble's Chris Layton, Billy Cox, Sacred Steel featuring Robert Randolph, Susan Tedeschi and David Hidalgo and Cesar Rosas of Los Lobos.

The following tour dates and venues have been announced with some already sold out!:

• March 4th - Arlington Theater - Santa Barbara, CA
• March 5th - Gibson Amphitheatre - Universal City, CA
• March 6th - The Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel - Las Vegas, NV
• March 7th - Ikeda Theater - Mesa, AZ
• March 9th - Table Mountain Casino - Friant, CA -- SOLD OUT
• March 10th - Warfield Theatre - San Francisco, CA
• March 11th - Warfield Theatre - San Francisco, CA
• March 12th - Silver Legacy - Reno, NV
• March 14th - Paramount Theater - Denver, CO
• March 15th - Stiefel Theatre For Performing Arts - Salina, KS
• March 16th - Uptown Theater - Kansas City, MO
• March 17th- Orpheum Theatre - Minneapolis, MN
• March 18th - Chicago Theatre - Chicago, IL
• March 20th - The Fox Theatre - ST Louis, MO
• March 21st - Riverside Theatre - Milwaukee, WI -- SOLD OUT
• March 23rd - Civic Theatre - Akron, OH
• March 24th - Wellmont Theatre - Montclair, NJ
• March 25th - Count Basie Theatre - Red Bank, NJ --  SOLD OUT
• March 27th - The Fox Theatre - Atlanta, GA
• March 28th - Durham Performing Arts Center - Durham, NC

Check out http://www.experiencehendrixtour.com/schedule for more details and artist performance roster.

Eric Johnson's Setup Secrets -- Part II

My article on Eric Johnson's setup secrets from a while ago proved quite popular. This article is a more detailed follow-up.

In 2001, top-notch guitar repairman Gary Brawer took some careful measurements of Eric Johnson's beloved '58 Stratocaster. These were his findings:

• The guitar was refretted with new .105 x .040 frets
• The center of each fret was slightly milled to flatten out the radius to prevent bent notes from fretting out
• String height is set at 4/64" for the high E and just under 4/64" for the low E, with both measurements taken at the 12th fret. The high E is set slightly higher to facilitate clean bending
• The truss-rod is adjusted so that there is absolutely no relief on the fingerboard
• The nut is cut low with just enough clearance for the open strings to ring cleanly
• The string ends are not inserted into the center holes of the tuners. Instead the string ends are threaded between each tuner's center slot and then wrapped around each post two or three times.
• The B string is wound all the way to the bottom of the tuning post and is not threaded through the string-tree
• At the bridge, stock vintage saddles are used on all the strings except for the high E. Here Eric uses a brass saddle to fatten up its sound.
• The four tremelo springs (set three on the bass side and one on the treble side) are tensioned just enough to keep the bridge resting against the body of the guitar, ensuring maximum transference of string energy. This setup also ensures that bending a string will also not cause other unbent strings to lower in pitch
• Except for a simple re-wiring of the second tone pot so that it controls the bridge pickup, all electronics are stock

• Eric sets the bridge pickup closer to the strings. The center polepieces on the bridge pickup are also pushed down to reduce the arc of the polepieces

• The neck pickup is 10/64" from the strings. The middle pickup is 12/64" from the strings on the treble side and 10/64" on the bass side. The bridge pickup is set at 6/64" on the bass side and 4/64" on the treble side

• Strings are GHS Nickel Rockers gauged .010, .013, .017, .026, .038 and .050

Gary's blog is loaded with pics and info about the repair work (and more) on the guitars and basses that come through his shop. Check it out here:

http://www.brawerguitarrepair.blogspot.com/


Eric's '58 Stratocaster is featured throughout this HotLicks DVD:

Arlen Roth's Guitar Lessons At Gibson.com

Born 30th October 1952, Arlen Roth grew up in New York's Bronx district. The son of famed New Yorker magazine cartoonist Al Ross, Roth took an early interest in the blues guitar stylings of BB King, Buddy Guy and Otis Rush.

Attending the High School of Music and Art as an art and photography student, Roth was soon gigging locally. In 1971 he moved to Woodstock and started playing with John Sebastian and Paul Butterfield.

It was Butterfield who immediately noticed a stark similarity in Roth's playing style with that of Mike Bloomfield, his former guitar-playing partner in the Paul Butterfield Blues Band.

In the mid-70's Roth was active in the New York session scene and toured with Art Garfunkel and Phoebe Snow. Roth made enough of an impression on Garfunkel to be invited to join the Simon & Garfunkel reunion tour in 1983.

Perhaps one of Arlen's more unusual gigs was as guitar coach for actor Ralph Macchio for the 1985 film Crossroads, where he helped Macchio to convincingly mime his guitar parts for the movie.

But Roth's greatest claim to fame has got to be his groundbreaking Hot Licks series of instructional tapes.

What started out originally as a series of Roth's own lessons on cassette tape in 1981, the Hot Licks catalog soon grew to include players the caliber of Albert Collins, Steve Morse, Tal Farlow and John Entwistle.

Check out the tres cool National 'map-shaped' guitar Arlen is holding in this early Hot Licks ad from 1981!

Soon Hot Licks was producing lessons on videotape, allowing mere guitar mortals a peek at the genius and dexterity of players like Joe Pass, Eric Johnson and Vinnie Moore. Hot Licks single-handedly spawned the instructional video industry that fluorishes to this day.

Arlen contributes a Lesson Of The Day column at Gibson's website here:

http://www.gibson.com/en-us/Lifestyle/Lessons/Lesson-Of-The-Day/lower-position-slam-licks/

He also maintains a blog at Gibson's website which you can read here:
http://www2.gibson.com/News-Lifestyle/Blogs/arlen-roth-blog.aspx

(Arlen Roth with Gold Top Les Paul Pic Source: www.gibson.com)

Check Out More Hot Licks DVDs Here!

Eric Johnson's Sideman Gig With Carole King

Reading Stratoblogster's recent post about Eric Johnson using a Les Paul reminded of this Carole King vid from the early '80s.

Eric Johnson appeared on Carole's One To One album in 1982 where he was featured on both piano and guitar. He also toured with her in Europe in April that same year.

A Les Paul player in his early days, Eric had this to say in an interview from 1986:

"I played a Les Paul a lot when I was in the Electromagnets, and after that band, I started playing more rhythm and lead at the same time. I just found that the single-coil pickups lent themselves more for doing rhythm and lead tones, whereas a Les Paul actually had a better lead tone, but the rhythm tone was a bit dark and muffled. I sold that Les Paul. I wish I still had it."

In the first clip above, Eric plays an extended jazz-tinged solo beginning at 2:48. Note the Wes Montgomery-style octaves and the fat-bodied tone he gets out of his Les Paul.

Embedding for the second YouTube vid has been disabled but you can follow the link here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gY3PpXihZkI

Check out Eric's solo spots at 1:26, 4:05 and 6:21.

We get a good glimpse at Eric's stage of stylistic development as it was in 1982 -- he's not as polished a player as he is now, but the tone and the technical hallmarks of his playing are nearly fully formed.

And you gotta love that vibrato!




Check Out More Eric Johnson CDs and DVDs Here!

The American Standard -- Eric Johnson's First Signature Stratocaster?

Here's a Fender American Standard Stratocaster ad featuring Eric Johnson from 1988.

At this time, Fender had yet to fully realise the sheer marketing potential of artist signature models -- the Eric Clapton Stratocaster was launched only in 1988 -- and the as yet undiscovered goldmine that was to be the Custom Shop.

After languishing in economic turmoil for much of the early 80's, Fender Musical Instruments was bought over from CBS in 1985. Under its new owners, a revamp of the product line was initiated.

One of the new and improved products, the American Standard Stratocaster, was launched in 1986.

Featuring a 22-fret neck with a flatter radius and medium-jumbo frets, hotter pickups with TBX tone control and a newly designed two-point pivot bridge with aluminum saddles, Eric Johnson gave his ringing endorsement to the American Standard Stratocaster, as depicted in this ad.

And Fender would have scored a major marketing coup if they had repackaged the American Standard as the Eric Johnson signature Strat.

But then again, hindsight is always 20/20..

Whatever the case may be, the marketing geniuses at Fender are more than making up for lost time with the seemingly boundless -- and expensive -- output of the Fender Custom Shop.

Buy Eric Johnson CDs and DVDs Here!

Eric Johnson's Guitar Setup Secrets

This article is gleaned from a 1988 interview with Eric Johnson's guitar tech Jerry Holmes. It's pretty insightful -- Holmes details the quirks of Eric's guitar setup and even mentions his infamous Energizer vs Duracell battery preference.

On his guitar tuneup routine before a show:
"I clean (the guitar) up, restring it, play it awhile.. strobe-tune it and then play it a little more to work it in. This way I know the guitar is ready. If a string breaks or something goes wrong during the show, it's just because the musician has played it to death; it's not because I didn't do my job."

"I always stretch new strings at the 12th fret."

On maintaining consistent intonation:
"I find that if you use the same kind of strings and change them on a regular basis, your intonation starts to set in and you don't have to move the bridge pieces that much. If you only change strings every week or two, it seems like you have to move the bridge pieces a lot more."

"He uses GHS Nickel Rockers on his Strats, gauged .010, .013, .017, .026, .036 and .046."

On the number of string wraps around each tuning post:
"The low E and A strings have to have exactly two wraps -- no less, no more. One wrap goes underneath and one goes on top, and that decreases the (string) angle."

"The D and G strings have to have two-and-a-half wraps, one over and one under, so it's kind of the opposite. I have to use a little more of the string to have half a wrap more."

"I don't trim any of the B string off at all. I put one wrap over and wind the rest of the string underneath. This puts just enough winds down to the very bottom of the post so I don't need to use the string tree."

"With the (high) E it doesn't matter, since I use the tree -- just one over, one under."

On Eric's tremelo and nut setup:
"Eric's Strat tremelos have to have four springs and sit level. The nut has to be perfect. It's got to have a clean groove, the high point has to be at the very front of the nut, and it has to have a downward angle on it. We use bone, but really hard plastic seems to stay in tune a little better. To lubricate it I use Tri-Flow gun oil that has Teflon in it."

On brass and stainless-steel plugs:
"(Eric) can hear the difference between a stainless-steel plug, like a Switchcraft, and a brass plug, which he prefers."

Energizers vs Duracells:
"He can tell the difference between what kind of batteries I put in fuzz boxes; it's really bizarre. He likes Eveready Energizers the best, over Duracells or Kodaks. I believe he hears things that no one else hears."

On Eric's never-ending tone quest:
"Just little picky things, like swapping out speaker cables and different kinds of speakers. He seems to never stop trying to find something older and more difficult to find that sounds great."





Check Out Eric Johnson CDs And DVDs Here!

Eric Johnson's Cliffs of Dover | Techniques and Equipment

Here's a clip of maestro Eric Johnson doing his thing on Cliffs of Dover. In the world of instrumental rock guitar, it's rare that a piece stands the test of time while being the signature tune most closely associated with the artist. Eric's Cliffs of Dover is just one such rarity.

On this clip he plays a lengthy intro with his most pristine of chimey clean tones, courtesy of the 4th position of the pickup selector switch on his Stratocaster. His clean sound is pumped through two Fender Twin Reverbs amps, each driving two 12" speakers in a single Marshall 4x12 cabinet for stereo. This cabinet is an open back, which allows him to get the bottom-end of a Marshall cab while still maintaining the open-back characteristics of a Fender Twin.

His clean tone is awash with copious amounts of Electro Harmonix Memory Man and/or Echoplex tape delay and a hint of chorus from his TC Electronics Chorus unit which he also uses as a splitter to send his signal to his two Twin Reverbs.

The background 'loop' sounds like an a 800ms sample from a Boss DD-2 Digital Delay pedal. Back in the day, the Boss DD's were among the few that provided a short sampling feature so that loops could be created on the fly. But you were limited to only 800ms of sampling time.

At 1:41-1:51, Eric uses what he calls his ' japanese koto' technique. While fretting notes conventionally with his left hand, he employs a thumb and forefinger technique with his right hand -- he plucks the note with his thumb while the index finger lightly dampens a note on the same string right next to the fret played with the left hand. He then adds a little vibrato with the left hand.

At 3:01 he flips to the lead pickup on his Strat, switches to his lead channel and begins traversing the fingerboard with his trademark pentatonic flurries. Unlike most players who approach pentatonics with hammer-ons and pull-offs, Eric prefers to alternate pick most of his pentatonic ideas. He describes his slightly unconventional picking technique as alternate picking where he holds the pick at an angle to minimize friction and faciltitate speed. He also picks from the guitar's body up into the air, brushing the string with the side of the pick with a slight bounce in the wrist. He's been known to lightly sandpaper the sides of his red Jazz III picks to create a finely rough surface to facilitate this brushing effect.

On his lead channel is a TC Electronic's Sustainer, a Fender Reverb unit, another Echoplex and a Chandler Tube Driver.

Interestingly, Eric places the Tube Driver after his reverb and delays. This gives his tone a characteristic warmth with a bit of 'mud' as his effected signal is being pumped into his overdrive.

His amp setup for his lead channel is either a Marshall 100 watt head, or the holy grail of amps, the Dumble Overdrive Special. His speaker cabinet of choice for this channel is a closed-back Marshall 4x12.

At 3:31 Eric makes a quick tonal adjustment on the lower tone knob. Strats are conventionally wired such that the first tone knob controls the front pickup and the second lower tone knob controls the middle pickup. The lead pickup is not wired to a tone control. Since Eric is on the 5th position on his pickup selector, this shows that his lead pickup is wired to his second tone control. Joe Bonamassa also talks about this very useful and simple Strat mod, which I mention here. This helps take off some of the shrill top-end when using the Strat's lead pickup on its own.

Eric Johnson is one of those rare masters of touch, tone and technique and all three elements feature abundantly in both his live performances and in his studio recordings. But his near-fanatical attention to detail on his solo records means that he probably spends more time than he should on each one -- which makes his recorded output pretty scarce.


Check Out Eric Johnson CDs And DVDs Here!