Tube scream or not tube scream…?

That is the question!
Il mio rapporto di amore-odio con il famoso pedale verde…

C’è voluto un po’ per apprezzarlo ma poi alla fine ci sono arrivato. È normale, esistono interi ranghi di estimatori e detrattori del Tube Screamer, iconico pedale creato da Ibanez nel 1979 e reso famoso da schiere di professionisti e star della chitarra. Come la maggior parte degli effetti per chitarra, la riuscita dipende anche (molto) dall’amplificatore. Un pedale, come il Tubescreamer, può suonare da favola in certi amplificatori e da schifo in altri. E la cosa può trarre in inganno e far pensare che è il pedale a non andar bene. Invece si tratta di accoppiamento. Infatti, nella mia ignoranza, all’inizio ero finito tra le file  dei detrattori, poi qualcosa è cambiato…

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How could this happen?

If I were to describe my journey as a guitarist (obviously a very amateur one, of course), I would have to start with my youthful passion for the Italian band The Pooh. Yes, The Pooh, that’s right., the name comes from the famous cartoon… But what do the Pooh have in common with blues-rock, with Hendrix, Clapton, and the likes of John Mayer, which I am currently covering? How did I go from Italian melodies to playing the John Mayer Trio’s production? Well, it may seem surprising at first glance, but there is a connection. First of all, it should be emphasized that these are four musicians of the highest caliber. One might think, okay, you’ve grown up and your tastes have changed. But that’s not really the case. It may seem strange, but there is a consistency, a logical thread that can be found…

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Now I’ve got to step on it…

Between the end of 2025 and the beginning of 2026, for various reasons, I found myself forced to bring only three pedals and a power supply to the rehearsal room. It wasn’t bad at all to travel so light. As I get older, I’m happy to carry less weight. For a while, I had to do this due to circumstances beyond my control, but I rediscovered the pleasure of having a couple of overdrives and a delay, and that’s it; and managing everything with the volume of the guitar. Of course, you also need a good amplifier, and I don’t have one in the rehearsal room. But it got me thinking. Why not simplify everything and keep it light, both in terms of weight and electrical signal, to manage? Continue reading  

If you miss the train, it’s gone

colibrì | Milioni di ParticelleThere’s a saying in Italy that goes almost like “If you miss the train, it’s gone”. Maybe the closest English variant is “Opportunity only knocks once”. Both mean that in life you basically only get one shot. Sometimes I find myself dwelling unnecessarily on certain choices I made in the past that influenced my geological career, and ten years after leaving the field, I still sometimes reflect on this. It’s pointless because you can’t change the past, and if things are the way they are today, there must be a reason for it, and there’s nothing you can do about it. At most, one can reflect on the choices made in order to provide guidance to our children and, why not, understand that perhaps there are no right or wrong choices, only different ones, choices that have led to different outcomes. We can play at imagining how things would have turned out, what results different choices would have led to. We can, but how useful is that? I’m not sure, but here I am, ten years after the “debacle,” reflecting on how, in the end, I can’t complain too much…

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My two Strats…

The two sisters? Or perhaps cousins? Second cousins? Perhaps it would be better to say foster sisters…

Well, yes, because they are not two Fenders. One is handmade in Italy, the other, the Fender, is made in Mexico. And they are, at least in appearance, emblematic of Fender’s golden years, roughly from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s. They are not really vintage, at least the Fender isn’t: it would be impossible for me to buy one, the prices are absurd. But it is a reproduction (from 2006) of how Stratocasters were built 60 years earlier at Fender in California. They have the specifications of the first Stratocasters, and even the color is very typical of that era, very 1950s, even though the painting technique was quite different. The foster cousin, on the other hand, has the typical appearance and most common color of the 1960s Stratocasters; then Fender was sold to CBS and things changed. But this guitar is perhaps closer to the real Fenders of the time, even if it has a completely different history.

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Nait Fever

New year – New amplifier. At the end of 2025, something strange happened. I was doing some research for a CD player that would match my system. Asking for advice from the usual excellent TNT-Audio, I was given three magic names: Naim, Rega, Cyrus. Something clicked in my head. These names brought back memories of when, at the end of 1991, I bought the speakers that, at all costs, I wanted to base my system on: TDL Studio 0.5. At the first store I visited, they immediately made it clear to me that my modest amplifier, although good, would not be able to drive them; and so those same three magical names came up…

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