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Seeing Sound | The Art & Design of the Stompbox | Book Feature Preview
Imagine visiting an art museum and discovering no paintings or sculptures. Instead, it’s filled with a rainbow of scratched, scuffed guitar pedals emblazoned with eye-popping, humorous, and sometimes cheeky graphics and some wild fonts. Confronted by this aesthetic overload, you realize guitar pedals aren’t just utilitarian. The work and creativity that went into the visual…
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Thinking Inside the Box | Book Feature Preview
If it isn’t clear to you by now, the musicians who use effects pedals love to talk about them. While exhibits different levels of fanaticism and attention to detail, stompboxes clearly offer unique insight into the creation of your favorite music. But what company developed the fuzz beloved by Thee Oh Sees‘ John Dwyer? Who’s…
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Fuzzy Drums, Hairy Horns and Silky Keys | Book Feature Preview
Effects pedals are not just for guitar gods. In the Stompbox feature Fuzzy Drums, Hairy Horns and Silky Keys, writer and guitarist James Rotondi pulls readers away from the six string and into a vibrant new musical lane. “String and horn players, synthesizer and keyboard mavens, and even vocalists, drummers, and turntablists have been exploiting…
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J’s Big Muff Museum | Book Feature Preview
Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo has a passion for effects pedals and will say, without hesitation, that his sound has been influenced by decades worth of stompboxes. He was the first artist to participate in the Stompbox book and his incredibly knowledgeable but down-to-earth nature made him the perfect conduit for an interview with an…
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Visiting Dimebag Darrell’s Home | The Making of Stompbox Book
The only time I ever visited the late, great Dimebag Darrell at home was also the only time I ever got serious alcohol poisoning—a coincidence that I can assure you was not remotely coincidental. So when his widow Rita “DimebagzHag” Haney invited Stompbox to South Arlington, Texas to shoot Dime’s stage-used prototype of Dunlop’s DB01…
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Peter Frampton’s Heil Talk Box and Visiting the Hard Rock Vault | The Making of Stompbox Book
Back in October 2019, Stompbox creative director and photographer, Eilon Paz, went to the Hard Rock Vault—located somewhere deep in the belly of Florida—to photograph Peter Frampton’s Heil Talk Box, which is the effect he used, most notably, for his iconic, extended guitar solo on “Do You Feel Like We Do,” from the 1976 release,…
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Visiting Mike Stern | The Making of Stompbox Book
From the late Seventies through the early Eighties the world of young jazz guitar belonged to John Abercrombie, Bill Frisell, Pat Metheny, John Scofield, and Mike Stern. Stern came to fame through his tenure with Miles Davis (an honor he shared at one point with Scofield), where his playing on the trumpeter’s The Man With…
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Visiting Dean Ween | The Making of Stompbox Book
Some things are just worth the wait. For two years now, we’ve been trying to track down Mickey Melchiondo Jr.—better known as Dean Ween, co-founder and lead guitarist of legendary alterna-weirdos Ween—for a Stompbox interview. When we finally got through to him last fall, he seemed totally into participating… but proved rather elusive when it…
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Visiting Marissa Paternoster | The Making of Stompbox Book
Throughout the 15 years that Screaming Females has been a band, the riff-driven three-piece has practiced in the basement of vocalist/guitarist Marissa Paternoster’s grandmother’s home. Occasionally, Paternoster notes, her grandmother would give her two cents on new arrangements: “When we wrote ‘Doom 84’ (which was on our 5th LP, Ugly), she said it sounded like…
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Visiting Peter Holmström | The Making of Stompbox Book
Peter Holmström is nearly as famed for his pedal knowledge these days as he is for being the Dandy Warhols’ innovative guitarist. Okay, maybe not – but dude knows a lot about pedals. I mean, he co-conceived the Malekko Charlie Foxtrot, fer Chrissakes… So it’s funny to think that when Holmström first acquired one of…