By Andrew Bansal
October 15th 2013, Guitar Center, West Los Angeles CA: Known to metalheads for his involvement in the legendary San Francisco Bay Area thrash metal band Testament but at the same time exploring a different side of the musical spectrum with his jazz trio, Alex Skolnick is one of the more versatile guitar players of our generation, and aside from the times he’s on stage, whenever he sits with his instrument at a trade convention or a music store and begins playing, his versatility is clearly witnessed. Yesterday evening, he turned up at the Guitar Center in West Los Angeles for a demonstration of his signature Budda AS Preceptor amp and a meet-n-greet to follow the demo. Around 30 people were in attendance, which wasn’t bad at all for a clinic-type performance at 6 PM on a Tuesday.
Peavey/Budda representative Chris Marr introduced Alex Skolnick and he entered the room at 6:15, wasting absolutely no time whatsoever as he sat down and started playing the guitar straightaway, opening up with a lick from the song ’99-09′ off of the AST album ‘Veritas’. That was a nice way to open the gig and capture the audience’s attention from the get go, and it was only then that the actual demo began, with him showing off the AS Preceptor’s clean channel first:
After the clean channel demo and a huge round of applause from the audience, he proceeded on to tell us that him and Budda had been working on this amp for a few years, and that it’s like a combination of his favorite amps he has used in the past few years. About his past amps, he said, ‘There’s always been a problem with my other amps. May be the clean channel wasn’t clean enough, the distorted channel didn’t feel right, or even if the amp was great it didn’t have the master boost. But this is an amp that has really addressed all the issues that came up in the past.’ He showcased more traits of the clean channel with some licks in overdrive mode and then a more delicate side the channel with little jazz piece which included The Scorpions’ ‘Still Loving You’:
From the clean channel he moved to the heavier stuff, first demoing a 70s-style classic hard rock tone through using ‘Channel 2’ of the amp, dusting off some AC/DC in the process:
From there, he went to ‘channel 3’ and added some gain and distortion to demo a 80s hard rock/metal type of sound with some Ozzy and Metallica bits, and some of the younger members of this audience started getting more into it:
A session of Q&A followed next, with people in the audience coming out with technical queries and performance requests for Alex. He addressed a question about the working process behind the making of the amp and talked about certain ‘quote riffs’, i.e. musical segments he would use to test out the sound and tone of the amp. This is where he brought out the Testament riffs, much to the delight of the audience:
Somebody requested him to play the solo in the song ‘Absence Of Light’ off of the Souls Of Black album, but Alex openly answered that by saying he doesn’t remember it, as it hasn’t been played on stage in a very long time. Another question was about the modes he uses in his solos, and he talked at length about the diminished scales, arpeggios, triads and 7ths as he played those patterns, both of the jazz and metal varieties. Then there was request for him to play the song ‘Western Sabbath Stomp’ off of the Veritas album, and once he was provided with a slide by one of the Guitar Center employees, he obliged:
That brought an end to the clinic/performance/demo, but before Alex moved to the adjoining room to sign autographs and talk to the fans who had turned up, he played one last outro bit:
Overall, this was a cool little event not only for Alex Skolnick/Testament fans but also for guitar enthusiasts in general. It was great to see Alex allocate time in his busy schedule to come out and do this event. Testament is almost always on the road, so we’ll get to see plenty of Alex Skolnick the metal guitarist in the near future but some of his fans will also hope to see him bring out the jazz trio sometime soon.
Visit Alex Skolnick and Peavey/Budda on the web at:
AlexSkolnick.com
facebook.com/AlexSkolnickFanPage
twitter.com/AlexSkolnick
instagram.com/AlexSkolnick
youtube.com/therealAlexSkolnick
Peavey.com
Budda.com