ZZ Top has one of those classic vintage guitar sounds that can be very hard to emulate. You can play with your knobs and try to tweak your gain, but it almost seems impossible to capture Billy Gibbons’ tone. Luckily Gibson.com is kind enough to show us how to do it.

When it comes to guitar tone, Gibbons uses what you would expect any rockin’ blues man to have in his arsenal, including Gibson guitars and Marshall amps. He has also been known to use a Fuzz pedal and a couple of other devices too.

For our purposes, in building Gibbons’ ZZ Top guitar tone at a home computer, I am going to go very simple and let the amp do the talking. I’ve said before if you start off with the right amp, you won’t need a bunch of pedals to make your tone sound like you want it to.

Read the rest How To Capture Billy Gibbons’ ZZ Top Guitar Tone

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Rock ‘n Roll’s legendary trio ZZ Top has just penned a deal with mastermind Rick Ruben to produce their next album. Their first since 2003’s Mescalero. Ultimate-guitar.com reported that BW&BK spoke with Billy Gibbons about the upcoming album.

“That starts pretty soon,” says Billy. “We just inked a deal with Rick Rubin that will be announced shortly. And I’m sure he’s got plans to make way to drag us off the touring trail back into the studio, which will be a nice excursion.”

Given his reputation for paring things back, would you be moving in the same direction, going for a back to the roots thing? “Could be. Rick and I have been friends for a couple of decades now. And we both like a lot of the same things. And mostly it is that rootsy kind of sense of realism. That’s his genius.”

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