Dipped In Tone Dipped in Tone

On this episode of Dipped in Tone, Rhett and Zack are joined by Wales-born guitarist Chris Buck. Buck is gearing up for a string of US tour dates with his fast-rising rock band Cardinal Black, including a date at Nashville’s Basement East after the original venue sold-out within a few hours.
Buck starts off digging into the details of his custom Yamaha Revstar and why he chose the versatile guitar over better-known offerings from legacy brands. Buck’s rise has been nearly meteoric: He started off posting videos on Facebook and Instagram before his wife suggested he give YouTube a try. His channel now counts 226,000 subscribers, thanks to his popular Friday Fretworks videos. But as Buck explains, his content is a tool to help fund his original music—a very successful tool.
Still, it’s not all sunshine. Buck details how he and his band navigate the brutal economics of touring, including some horror stories of how they ended up losing money on merch sales. Later, we learn how Buck built his signature playing style—mostly by ear and by accident. “I don’t think anyone has ever ended up sounding like themselves through sitting down and going ‘Right, im gonna try to sound unique,’” he says. “It just happens over time.”
He’s gone from YouTube to the Royal Albert Hall, but Buck reveals a quiet concern that he’s peaked too early. What do Rhett and Zach make of that fear? Tune in.
Get 10% off with promo code DIPPED at http://chasebliss.com
Go see Chris on tour: http://thecardinalblack.com
Subscribe, like, and leave us a comment
Sign up on our mailing list: http://eepurl.com/iaCee5
Support us on Patreon for access to our discord server and other perks! https://www.patreon.com/dippedintone
Follow us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/dippedintone
Dipped in Tone is:
Rhett Shull https://www.rhettshull.com/
Zach Broyles / Mythos Pedals https://mythospedals.com
Premier Guitar https://www.premierguitar.com/

This time on Dipped In Tone, Rhett and Zach are digging into today’s best nitty-gritty gear news. Tired of trawling Reddit and forums to figure out what’s going on? Tune in for some authoritative takes from your two favorite tone fiends.
First up are the new Line 6 modeling offerings, including the compact, affordable stompbox that’s making waves across the industry. How does it compare to its big brother, the Helix? Is there any hope for a bean-shaped POD revival? Time will tell…
Our hosts touch on the craze around vintage PAF pickups (which was fetching $2500 for a pair), and compare the Gibson and Fender economy lines: Who makes the better entry-level instrument, and are the budget models starting to lap their more expensive counterparts?
Later, the duo runs down the best-in-class Ed Sheeran signature looper before moving on to the landscape of legacy brands. Is Marshall still relevant outside of their barbershop-ready Bluetooth speakers? How is Hiwatt beating them in the race to digital? And what will happen to our favorite gear companies when they’re bought up by investment portfolios?
Stick around for all this and more, plus an update on Zach’s “Gotta Catch ’Em All” Tubescreamer hunt.
Get 10% off with promo code DIPPED at http://chasebliss.com
Subscribe, like, and leave us a comment
Sign up on our mailing list: http://eepurl.com/iaCee5
Support us on Patreon for access to our discord server and other perks! https://www.patreon.com/dippedintone
MERCH: https://teespring.com/stores/dipped-in-tone
Follow us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/dippedintone
 
Dipped in Tone is:
Rhett Shull  https://www.rhettshull.com/
Zach Broyles / Mythos Pedals  https://mythospedals.com
Premier Guitar https://www.premierguitar.com/

Rhett and Zach are joined on this episode of Dipped In Tone by soft-spoken jazz guitar master Julian Lage. After Zach shares some last-minute production headaches with Mythos’ new Herculean Deluxe, Lage sits in for fascinating, spirited dive into how he thinks about tone, composition, and his new record, Speak To Me.
The gang unpacks just about every aspect of Lage’s playing and sound. They touch on Lage’s relationships with his amps and dynamics (“I have to get overstimulated by an amplifier,” says Lage) and get the details on his Collings signature model—plus, of course, what ‘good’ or ‘bad’ guitar sounds mean. “No sound is empirically good or bad,” says Lage. “It’s just how it fits into the narrative.”
Did you know that Lage gets to know his guitars by doing direct into his DAW, and that effects pedals kinda terrify him? He doesn’t like transcribing, either—he’s got a unique take on studying Robben Ford solos. Listen in to find out why, and hear about the best guitar lesson his father ever taught him.
Head to http://stewmac.com/dippedintone for 10% off your order!
Subscribe, like, and leave us a comment
Sign up on our mailing list: http://eepurl.com/iaCee5
Support us on Patreon for access to our discord server and other perks! https://www.patreon.com/dippedintone
MERCH: https://teespring.com/stores/dipped-in-tone
Follow us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/dippedintone
 
Dipped in Tone is:
Rhett Shull  https://www.rhettshull.com/
Zach Broyles / Mythos Pedals  https://mythospedals.com
Premier Guitar https://www.premierguitar.com/

Our battle-weary hosts have returned from the scorched trenches and badge-strewn wastelands in Anaheim, California, and they’re ready to recount what they saw. Welcome to the NAMM 2024 airing of the grievances.
Zach and Rhett are coming at this from two different angles: Zach as a vendor with Mythos Pedals, and Rhett as an attendee and noted YouTuber-about-town. This year marked Zach’s first on the vendor side, an experience he calls “trial by fire on the show floor.” It ain’t cheap to showcase at NAMM, and Zack has some ideas for how to give participants more bang for their buck. The worst feeling in the world, after all, is dropping a mountain of cash to travel to the show, only to stand alone at your booth for four days. (By the way, three days might be a better fit.)
Rhett and Zach share their horror stories—from pushy salesmen in suits to awkward physical confrontations—and forecast some possible solutions before they turn to the auction of a Mark Knopfler guitar for an insane sum. Why are vintage guitar prices shooting up, and how are scalpers screwing up the gear market? Tune in for the juice.
Head to stewmac.com/dippedintone for 10% off your order!Subscribe, like, and leave us a comment
Sign up on our mailing list: http://eepurl.com/iaCee5
Support us on Patreon for access to our discord server and other perks! https://www.patreon.com/dippedintone
MERCH: https://teespring.com/stores/dipped-in-tone
Follow us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/dippedintone
 
Dipped in Tone is:
Rhett Shull  https://www.rhettshull.com/
Zach Broyles / Mythos Pedals  https://mythospedals.com
Premier Guitar https://www.premierguitar.com/

Rhett and Zach kick off the new year with renewed commitment to an old habit: making a daily to-do list, or as Rhett calls it, “the shit list.” The guys debate the finer points of which stationary makes the best to-do list backdrop before they’re joined by Tom Murphy, the preeminent craftsman of guitar-aging and namesake of Gibson’s high-end Murphy Lab.
Murphy, who has been with Gibson for 25 years, takes Rhett and Zach back to the starting line, when he and his friends would buy, trade, mod, poke, and prod any guitars they could get their hands on—Murphy quips that his entire career is in part penance for an early botched attempt at refinishing a ’68 Les Paul. Murphy eventually found his niche in aging: “Who else is gonna take a razor blade and make a bunch of lines on a guitar they just refinished?”
Along the way, Murphy digs into the labor and pricing considerations with heavily aged instruments, including when a third-party guitar sale made him realize he had to raise his rates. His aging and restoration work involves balancing considerations of aesthetic, tone, and playability all at once, which he likens to “the spinning plates guy at the circus.” “Which one can you afford to let fall?” Murphy says. The magic of his work, he explains, is in accentuating the natural properties of the guitars: “Our finish doesn’t make them sound better, it lets them sound better.”
Murphy’s story involves soaring highs, like catching ZZ Top in a tiny club in Houston in the early ’70s, watching Billy Gibbons thrash the very guitar model he would later spend his days working on. But stick around to hear about the dramatic lows, too, like when he witnessed a guitar’s finish shatter before his eyes after a freezing, snowed-in night in Boulder, Colorado.
Murphy doesn’t have plans to retire at the moment, but he has one caveat: “I just don’t wanna be found slumped over a guitar,” he chuckles.

Big thanks to StewMac for sponsoring this episode. Head to http://stewmac.com/dippedintone to get 10% off!
Subscribe, like, and leave us a comment
Sign up on our mailing list: http://eepurl.com/iaCee5
Support us on Patreon for access to our discord server and other perks! https://www.patreon.com/dippedintone
MERCH: https://teespring.com/stores/dipped-in-tone
Follow us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/dippedintone
 
Dipped in Tone is:
Rhett Shull  https://www.rhettshull.com/
Zach Broyles / Mythos Pedals  https://mythospedals.com
Premier Guitar https://www.premierguitar.com/

Intervals bandleader Aaron Marshall joins Rhett and Zach for this installment of Dipped In Tone, which is essentially a crash-course in touring, merch design, road-ready rig planning, and keeping your head above water as an unsigned act.
The trio start off with a deep dive into Intervals’ focus on high-quality merch, and Marshall outlines his design and marketing philosophies. Increasingly, these elements are the lifeblood of any band that wants to make a living in music: “A touring band is just a traveling T-shirt shop that gets to play music for 40 minutes,” Marshall quips.Marshall expands on his DIY expertise—Intervals has self-released all four of their full-length records, and still managed to thrive and build a name for themselves. Obviously, that requires a lot of hard work before outsourcing things like management and booking. “You have to take it to your wit’s end,” says Marshall.
Marshall explains how Intervals has managed to maintain a top-level live production without label backing, and why, after literally tucking his tube amps in to a tour van bunk bed, he won’t take them on the road anymore. (“Glass is crazy to be touring with,” he says.) Part of the band’s low-frills magic is a “go along to get along” attitude as an opening act, which includes foregoing specific pieces of gear to make their lives—and the lives of everyone involved in a tour production—more easy.
While Intervals leans toward the gnarlier side of the rock spectrum, Marshall connects his playing back to the classics, and shares why he thinks it’s important to keep a healthy, back-to-basics musical diet: “Playing the blues and learning how to play rock is like eating broccoli at every meal.”
Stay tuned til the end to get the details on Intervals’ upcoming 2024 release.
Subscribe, like, and leave us a comment
Sign up on our mailing list: http://eepurl.com/iaCee5
Support us on Patreon for access to our discord server and other perks! https://www.patreon.com/dippedintone
MERCH: https://teespring.com/stores/dipped-in-tone
Follow us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/dippedintone
 
Dipped in Tone is:
Rhett Shull  https://www.rhettshull.com/
Zach Broyles / Mythos Pedals  https://mythospedals.com
Premier Guitar https://www.premierguitar.com/