Iommi Fans, Get the New Guitar Player Mag

Great Tone Info!

After reading a disappointing interview with Tony Iommi and Edward Van Halen in Guitar World – how you interview those two guys and just end up with a b**ch session I have no idea – it was a pleasure to get the January 2010 Guitar Player with Tony on the cover. It’s a great gear-related interview: props to the interviewer, Barry Cleveland, GP associate editor. (As a side note, it would appear that Guitar Player can’t get an Ed interview – bummer.)

It’s certainly worth forking over the $7.00 if you’re a Tony/Black Sabbath fan. And while I’d love to tell you every piece of gear info in there, I can’t – so here are some interesting tidbits from it.

The Thimbles

Tony relates the process he goes through to put leather on the thimbles that cover two of his fingertips on his right hand – fascinating. The only leather that works for him is a leather jacket he bought 35 years ago. He’s still cutting pieces from it!

It goes without saying but is rarely considered that Tony can’t feel the strings with two of his four right-hand fingers (remember he is a lefty). I’m sure he’s used to it, but that must be tough. I’m thinking about trying it, just to see how tough it is.

His Treble Booster

Like many guitarists of his era, Tony used a Dallas Rangemaster treble booster to goose his signal hitting the amps (he ran it into the bass input of his Laneys). Moreover, we learn in this interview that the boost was modded, but Tony doesn’t know how. That’s important because he lost it – sort of.

A great question that to my knowledge hadn’t been asked before of Tony is, Why did you stop using the Rangemaster? The answer: A guy he knew found it in the trunk of Tony’s car and threw it away! (As far as Tony knows, anyway.)

Because Tony didn’t know how it was modded, he was never able to replicate that sound – but he’s been trying ever since. He said: “I’m always trying stuff just to see what it sounds like and, really, to try and recreate more or less what I had years ago with the Rangemaster.”
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I could go on, but you get the picture. Tony talks about wax-potting and doing other things to get his P-90s to stop feeding back, why he doesn’t like whammy bars, his favorite wah, Clapton, the blues and more.

Guitar magazines are hit-and-miss, and you’ll have to decide if the rest of that issue is worth your hard-earned cash. But at least you know the cover interview won’t be a disappointment!

Category: Rangemaster, Tony Iommi/Black Sabbath