Sammy's gear

[DangerousR6]

Looks like Sammy's jammin' with Blackstar now....Good choice Sammy... :icon_thumright:

 

[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

Is Sammy a damn good guitar player?  Yes.

Is Sammy where he is today because he's a damn good guitar player?  No.

 

[stubhead]

Jeez, I woulda thought he'd be playing the (Fender-built) EVH amps....  :doh:

( i wonder if he'll ever be able to trick yet another co. into forking up some dough for his {thirty-year out-of-date} "endorsement"... there's always Henry Jukes and the boys at Gibson....)

 

[DangerousR6]

Is Sammy a damn good guitar player?  Yes.

Is Sammy where he is today because he's a damn good guitar player?  No.

No, is correct, it's because he's a damn good singer and song writer... :guitarplayer2:

 

[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

Is Sammy a damn good guitar player?  Yes.

Is Sammy where he is today because he's a damn good guitar player?  No.

No, is correct, it's because he's a damn good singer and song writer... :guitarplayer2:

Right, so who cares what, or even if, he plays?  Not to sound callous...

 

[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

Many guitar players known for playing guitar and having their sound, you can often attribute it to their stubborn insistence on trademark gear.  Case in point, Angus Young, an SG and a Marshall.  I know Sammy's good, but I can't think of his sound. 

On the inverse, guys like Vince Gill who could, and have, just straight up made as a vocalist or studio guitar player, they have an inherent genre specific style, but I also can't think of their guitar sound.  15 years ago when EMG was really pushing the prewired, preassembled pickguards, they had a Kirk Hammett, David Gilmour, Steve Lukather, and Vince Gill set.  Great!  Now I can sound like Vince Gill, a guy that has one of everything, and I've rarely ever seen play anything with EMGs.  He's got a Les Paul with a 2-Tek on it also.  I need one of those too.

 

[stubhead]

This is the finest "composed" guitar solo I've heard this side of Steve Morse*:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3SavqJdVjk

It's like a master class in position playing. How do I know it's composed? Because he played the exact same solo minus one verse at the 2004 Crossroads festival, and it was the best guitar solo on the DVD! If I could play one that good, I'd play it for 15 years too.... Here he's in front on an invitation-only crowd of Nashville's finest - he's nervous as hell, shifting from one foot to the other. That little smile at 4:52 is one of relief, cause he knew he nailed it. Pulling a standing ovation out of any crowd for a guitar solo is hard enough these days.

*(Yes, composed - Morse has the kind of mind where I imagine he could play a note-for-note version of any solo he played  - thirty years ago.)

 

[DangerousR6]

Is Sammy a damn good guitar player?  Yes.

Is Sammy where he is today because he's a damn good guitar player?  No.

No, is correct, it's because he's a damn good singer and song writer... :guitarplayer2:

Right, so who cares what, or even if, he plays?  Not to sound callous...

Well regardless of your opinion, he's still a damn good guitar player. He may not be EVH or Satriani, but he doesn't have to be. In fact you don't have to play like those 2 to be good. Jame Hetfield  is a great guitar player, but he's not a shredder, but he's still better than you or I, and so is Sammy...

 

[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

I know Sammy's good.  I hope that came across.  His guitar work usually isn't the stuff one buys an album to hear is what I was getting at.  That, and his rig is probably a constant work in progress.

I think for the ultimate passive/aggressive move, Sammy's stage rig should be whatever Eddie is hocking at the moment.

Great Vince Gill find, Stubhead.  It's hard to imagine him being nervous about anything.  Like John Mayer, you wonder which Vince Gill you're gonna get sometimes.  The sensitive ballad guy, or the guitar clinic guy.

 

[stubhead]

Hagar's book "Red" is an entertaining read. Among the many silly things EVH did (it's a long list) was not taking advantage of having another guitar player in Van Halen, they could've really ran with it. In fact, Hagar said that when Eddie brought in a "song", it always sounded like a finished guitar instrumental - he'd just say "stick some words in here" and leave. One time Hager was visiting Eddie & Valerie Bertinelli and she mentioned to him how much she liked the lyrics to such-and-such a song - and Eddie was like, which one's that? He didn't know any of the lyrics to any of the songs, they were just placeholders in between his guitar solos! Now that makes sense to me, but I'm not trying to sell millions of records. Luckily...

 

[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

It isn't shocking band members don't know or even hear lyrics in their own band.  It's a bit egocentric to spend your spare time listening to your own stuff.  Even playing live, you have your own side of the stage or monitor mix where the goal is to hide from the vocals.  A night of Jameson, 2 packs of full flavors, and the 3rd four hour show in 2 days left lead vocal duties to me once.  And no, I didn't know all the verses to our originals I'd been playing for a year and a half.  Luckily, those listening didn't either.

 

[Jet-Jaguar]

No, is correct, it's because he's a damn good singer and song writer... :guitarplayer2:

Right, so who cares what, or even if, he plays?  Not to sound callous...

There's probably a lot of good guitar players that we've never heard of because they're not associated with good songs.

 

[swarfrat]

Or good business. That's one of the more depressing parts of this for me.

Learning an instrument is difficult, and requires a lot of investment.
Learning music may not seem to require the same kind of slavish devotion, but it's also harder to define/grasp.
Many of us stop here --^

but none of it really gets you far if you don't:
Understand and learn performance art - showmanship, set list organization, playing the crowd, etc..

Finally, after you get all those ducks in a row, you need to know how to run the business side. How to get gigs, get heard, sell stuff, cultivate a following.

The further down the list you go, the more it resembles work and the less it resembles what you started out wanting to do. 

 

[Strat Avenger]

Sammy isn't known for guitar "tone".