PICK PICKS: My Megadeth picks
Here are a couple of Megadeth picks the awesome Andy Brauer gave me when I visited his studio a few years ago. Cool, huh?
Looks like Dean has some cool new stuff coming out…
Got the Dean mail-out yesterday with info about their NAMM webcast and 35th anniversary celebrations. The graphic at the top of the email looked cool enough – bitchen two-headed eagle thing, NAMM dates, booth number… but then I looked in the bottom left corner, two axes tucked away behind another:
Good lord. It’s a Dean VMNT Dave Mustaine signature with a Peace Sells …But Who’s Buying? graphic, and a version (with a different headstock) of one of Dimebag Darrell’s lesser-known but cooler Dean MLs! In fact, this was the guitar Dime was using in one of the first pics I ever saw of him, in a Randall ad back in the day when Dime went by the name Diamond Darrell publicly instead of Dimebag Darrell. You can see Dime using this axe in this video for “Primal Concrete Sledge,” and that’s what this Dean model is named: the Dime ‘Concrete Sledge’ ML. The original was actually a Washburn neck on a Dean body.
Keep an eye on Dean’s website and I Heart Guitar at NAMM time!
Dave Mustaine: Guitar Prodigy app now available!
A few weeks ago I posted about being one of the beta testers for the new Dave Mustaine guitar app. Well now it’s here! Dave Mustaine: Guitar Prodigy, from the makers of Rock Prodigy, is available in the app store now. It’s an awesome product which gives you a real insight into Dave’s guitar technique, using full Megadeth songs as source material, and you can then take that information and use it to either become a master of Megadeth riffage, or apply to your own compositions and style.
Check out the app here.
There’s also a contest under way to win a signed Dean Dave Mustaine VMNT guitar! Copy and paste this link http://bit.ly/DM-GP-WD1 to your Facebook wall to enter.
Original Metallica line-up members return for one night only!
Photo from @josemangin‘s Twitter:
Woo! So I hoped it’d happen but I didn’t dare dream. Metallica reunited with original bass player Ron McGovney, lead guitarist Dave Mustaine and – whoa! – even original guitarist Lloyd Grant at the last of their 30th anniversary shows at the Fillmore in San Francisco! This is an even bigger deal than the Big 4 shows!
Dave Mustaine app sneak peek
Over the last few weeks I’ve been beta-testing the new, soon-to-be-released Dave Mustaine guitar instructional app by Rock Prodigy. It’s an incredible tool which offers a great insight into Dave’s approach to guitar and songwriting. One of the other testers, 12-year-old Noah Dail, has made this video of him using the app. Nice work Noah!
INTERVIEW: Megadeth’s Chris Broderick
Th1rt3en is Chris Broderick’s second album in one of the most coveted guitar jobs in the world: Dave Mustaine’s sparring partner in Megadeth. Broderick has some pretty big shoes to fill (Marty Friedman, Chris Poland, Glen Drover), but that’s old news: he brings his own style, feel and technique to the band in a way that they hadn’t really had since the early days of Friedman’s reign in the 90s. Th1rt3en finds Broderick once again shredding with the best of them and weaving in and out of classically Megadeth riffage with confidence and ease. I caught up with Broderick to talk Th1rt3en and, of course, guitar.
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Hi, is this Peter?
Yes it is. Nice to meet you again! I met you a couple of years ago NAMM.
Oh did you really? Where at? What booth?
The Ibanez booth.
Oh nice! Very cool.
And now you’re with Jackson. How’s your new signature guitar working out for you?
It’s awesome! Dare I say, it’s perfect, for me personally. Because you have to understand, when I approached Jackson they were the only ones that never said no. They said “Yeah, we can do that, and we can do that.” So I built that guitar from the ground up thinking about everything I could from the ergonomics to the weight distribution to the placement of the tone knob. Even the placement of the pickups, in addition to the fretboard radius, the stainless steel frets, extremely tall narrow frets. I built that guitar up to be exactly what I’d want, so for me it definitely is the perfect instrument.
Are you using the seven-string version with Megadeth, or is that more of a ‘just because you can’ thing?
No. Well, I’ve always been more of a seven-string player than a six-string player, ever since they were available in the late 80s, early 90s. So for me I’ll always be playing more seven-string stuff. But since Megadeth is more of a traditional thrash band we stick to six strings just to keep those traditional thrash roots more in focus. So whenever I’m onstage with Megadeth it’s always six string, and when I do my own stuff it’s definitely seven-string.
NEWS: Mustaine & Spitz, Glee, Def Leppard lullabies, Walker Brothers
‘Ssup. Here are my latest news stories for Gibson.com. The Megadeth story has a little unused snippet from an interview I did with Dave Mustaine for Mixdown magazine in November 2010.
Megadeth, Ex-Anthrax Guitarists Form New Band
Glee Producer Starts His Own Label
Def Leppard Guitarists Record Lullaby Album
Walker Brothers’ John Walker Dies
Hi! I'm Peter Hodgson. I write for Gibson.com, Australian Guitar, Australian Musician, Mixdown Magazine (including my instructional column, 'Unleash Your Inner Rock God,' which has been running since 2007), Blunt, Beat (including their weekly hard rock/metal column Crunch) and The Brag. And I'm Assistant Social Coordinator with Seymour Duncan.
I've been playing guitar since I was 8 years old, and I've been writing for magazines since I was 18. I've also worked as a guitar teacher (up to 50 students a week), a setup tech, a newspaper editor, and I've also dabbled in radio a little bit. I live in Melbourne, Australia, and my hobbies include drinking way too much coffee, and eating way too much Mexican food.
You can check out my guitar playing at Bandcamp or on YouTube, and feel free to email me at iheartguitarblog@gmail.com