Welcome back to Mod Garage. This month I want to give you some insight into putting vintage parts into new electric guitars and explore why so many people are doing this.The trend to put old vintage parts into electric guitars started years ago and it’s still in vogue today. But besides the hip factor, is it reasonable to do so? What can you expect, and are there specific situations where this makes sense for a new electric guitar? In this column, we’ll have to face some sad and unpopular facts (and myths) about vintage guitars and vintage parts, so not everyone will be happy about this.In general, the vintage world is not limited to guitars or instruments. The scene includes a lot of categories, such as cars, watches, clothing, furniture, books, electric devices, and much more. But the basic principles are always the same and there are many reasons why someone decides to jump on that wagon.We don’t have to discuss putting vintage parts on vintage guitars, which seems logical and natural. On a vintage guitar, it’s all about stock condition and authenticity, like on every vintage collector’s item, no matter what it is.Let’s start with sad vintage “truth” number one:Today we can build much better electric guitars than ever before.That’s not really bad news, if you’re not a vintage guitar seller. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the old vintage guitars are obsolete or bad in comparison with the ones we can build today. But with today’s high-tech equipment, the level of consistent quality is outstanding and close to perfect. All instruments produced that way are more or less completely identical. Vintage guitars, even if built from the same persons on the same day, are virtually all individual items, which for sure is one of the main keys to their magic. And naturally everyone wants to own an individual item rather than an industrial, mass-produced object.Today we can build tuners that are far ahead of what was possible in the ’50s and ’60s, as well as bridges and tremolos that are little mechanical pieces of art regarding precision and accuracy. So, does it make sense to put vintage hardware on a new electric guitar?Regarding quality and performance, it’s a clear NO! I have numerous customers doing exactly the opposite, no matter if it’s sacrilege or not. They want to play their vintage guitars but with today’s highest possible performance, so they take out the vintage parts, carefully storing them away, replacing them with modern 1:1 copies to spruce up the old guitars. This is often the case with tuners, string trees, tremolos, and the like, and it’s important that the new parts will fit 1:1 so no new holes need to be drilled to make them fit.Sometimes imperfection to a certain degree can be exactly the thing you’re looking for regarding tone.Old and brittle plastic parts like pickguards and pickup covers are also stored away. You can buy modern plastic lookalikes easily and so the old parts are ready to drop in again when you want to sell the guitar someday. Vintage amp players are taking out the original speakers to protect and store them away. This way you can have both: Play your vintage guitar and amp with the highest possible performance, plus keep their value alive because you can always swap parts back to stock condition. I have quite a few customers who take out the complete electronics along with the pickguard, playing a modern substitute under the hood because they don’t want to risk damage to the original. And, believe it or not, a lot of them say the new pickups and electronics sound better than the originals, but compared to the originals, they are worthless. In general, this applies to all vintage items. For example, today it’s possible to build better cars and watches than ever before … but they don’t make them like they used to, which is one of the number one pro-vintage arguments.Naturally, there could be other reasons—including emotional ones—to put vintage hardware on a new electric guitar. This is highly individual. Maybe it’s just for fun because it was already lying around, or it looks cooler because it’s used and beaten up. But this can be had cheaper—the market for aged guitar parts is huge. Or maybe one of your favorite artists did something that you want to copy. This also applies to a lot of other vintage stuff like cars and watches—who doesn’t want to drive a Porsche 550 Spyder model like James Dean or wear the same Rolex Submariner 6538 that James Bond wore in 1962 during his first appearance in Dr. No?But maybe it’s because people think putting vintage parts into a new guitar will increase its value. This leads us straight to sad vintage “truth” number two:A new electric guitar with vintage parts fetches more money than it does in stock condition.This is simply not true, at least when sold as one piece with the vintage parts built into the guitar. Like any modification, this will not increase the value of a new guitar—time and being witness to countless auctions has proven this.But this is the perfect transition to sad “truth” number three:A vintage guitar makes the most profit when sold completely intact.Exactly the opposite is true. If you want to make the most profit, nothing beats completely disassembling a vintage guitar and selling it in pieces. I know some vintage parts dealers in Europe and the U.S.—I’ve worked with some of them for over two decades—and they’re all doing the same thing: finding vintage guitars that are for sale, disassembling them, and selling off the individual parts.One dealer told me this: If you can sell a vintage guitar for $10k, take it all apart and you can make $15k with the individual parts. So, if you put vintage parts on a new guitar that you want to sell, take out the vintage parts and sell them off individually to make top dollar. (It’s not a bad idea to store away any hardware you remove from your guitars, because you might need to put it back in later.)So, are there any instances where it does make sense to put vintage parts in a new guitar? I would say yes, and I can think of two good considerations:1. Putting vintage pickups into a new electric guitar.Putting vintage switches, pots, output jacks, and wires into a new guitar is not reasonable. The pickup-selector switches are still made the same way now as they were in the past. Only the materials have changed a bit, enhancing reliability and longevity. So why spend $600 for a vintage CRL 3-way switch when you can get much better performance for $30? A switch has no tone, so leave the vintage switch for a vintage guitar. Same with pots: They don’t have a tone and modern pots are much more reliable. Companies spent years researching the taper and action of vintage pots and you can buy exact vintage copies for only a few bucks. You get the idea.With a faithful recreation of a vintage pickup plus a vintage tone cap, you can come very close to the magical sound, so investing in a tested NOS tone cap can make a big tonal difference, whereas a new cap can’t.However, if you fall in love with a set of vintage pickups, it can make sense to put them into your modern guitar. There is no financial risk. They will increase in value, so if you ever want to sell them again you will get more than you paid, enjoying their tone in the meantime. Keep in mind that companies also spent years to analyze, research, and re-engineer vintage pickups and today you can buy almost every given pickup you’re looking for and as close as possible to its original. Such pickups are a lot cheaper compared to a vintage set, but naturally this is no investment.2. Putting vintage tone caps into a new electric guitar.This is for sure a reasonable procedure to quickly enhance the tone of a new electric guitar. Installing a vintage tone cap into a guitar is also done easily because it’s a simple 1:1 swap with the original tone cap. It’s still possible to find NOS vintage tone caps today, but prices are rising while supplies are running out. Why is this an improvement in tone? The tone of vintage guitars is often described as detailed, harmonically rich, and open. Part of this tone is from the tone cap. Today capacitors are built to perfection and with very low tolerances so they will do a perfect job. In our electric guitars we use them to only short out the highs against ground, leaving the bass untouched … in very simple words.Production processes to build capacitors in the ’50s and ’60s were far from perfect, and besides high tolerances in capacitance, certain caps (depending on the dielectric inside) tend to be kind of “leaky” regarding overtones. A modern cap will do a perfect job, filtering out all overtones that it’s supposed to. Most vintage caps will do a lousy job, still letting some overtones through, especially the harmonic ones. This is what makes the tone so rich and detailed, and, by the way, it’s the same situation with tube amps.With a faithful recreation of a vintage pickup plus a vintage tone cap, you can come very close to the magical sound, so investing in a tested NOS tone cap can make a big tonal difference, whereas a new cap can’t. Sometimes imperfection to a certain degree can be exactly the thing you’re looking for regarding tone. Back in the golden guitar days, no one really cared about such odd details, and even if they did … it was state of the art and all new technologies were still science-fiction at that time. Today we know better and can use old technology for certain tasks.That’s it for now. Next month we’ll explore our next guitar mod, so stay tuned. Until then … keep on modding!

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Guitarist Taylor Nordberg (THE ABSENCE, INHUMAN CONDITION), who recently joined Florida death metal veterans DEICIDE, was asked in a new interview with the “Brews N Tunes” podcast if he and his new bandmates have commenced work on the follow-up to 2018’s “Overtures Of Blasphemy” album. He responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “They had started most of the new album before I joined, but since announcing [that we are going to celebrate the 30th anniversary of DEICIDE’s sophomore album] ‘Legion’ [by performing the LP in its entirety], we’ve kind of shifted gears and we’re trying to lock that in and get a set prepped just in the event that a show pops up. But they have most of the new album prepped, and then we’re hammering out, ironing out some details with the last couple songs. So hopefully that will be out this year. I don’t know any concrete plans on when we’re gonna start pre-production or recording or any of that. But hopefully this year. That would be awesome. But the material is sounding killer. It sounds like DEICIDE.”

Earlier in the month, Nordberg spoke about how he landed the DEICIDE gig in an interview with “The Zach Moonshine Show”. He said: “In 2019, my band THE ABSENCE toured with DEICIDE in the U.S. And we got to know the guys and got along really well. And I actually found out that Glen [Benton, DEICIDE frontman] lives, like, two streets over from Jeramie [Kling, THE ABSENCE drummer] and I, where we live. So Jeramie and Glen became good buddies and they ride bikes all the times. It’s a funny little thing, thinking about that. But long story short, [previous DEICIDE guitarist] Chris [Cannella], I believe he’s the head of A&R at Dean Guitars so he’s focusing on that for right now. I heard that they needed a guitar player, so I learned a couple of songs, made a couple of videos, and Glen saw ’em and liked what he saw. So we had a couple of practices, and bing bang boom, here we are.”

Cannella amicably left DEICIDE last month after a three-year run.

When Benton first announced Nordberg’s addition to DEICIDE, he said in a statement: “We are pleased to announce and welcome Taylor Nordberg to the DEICIDE family! An amazing and accomplished guitarist who takes our sound to the next level and brings a profound level of professionalism that completes and compliments the DEICIDE machine!”

Cannella said in a separate statement: “Yes, it is true. I am no longer in DEICIDE. There is no drama and we all kept it quiet as to not lead into drama or speculation.

“I have all the love and respect for Glen, Steve and Kevin. I had so many great times over the last three years I cherish for a lifetime, especially the friendship.

“Cheers to all and thanks for all the love and support. I’m excited for what’s to come.”

Cannella joined DEICIDE in 2019 following the departure of guitarist Mark English.

English became a member of DEICIDE in 2016 after the exit of longtime guitarist Jack Owen.

“Overtures Of Blasphemy” was released in September 2018 via Century Media.

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Former SKID ROW singer Sebastian Bach joined THE ALLMAN BETTS BAND on stage last night (Thursday, February 24) at The Theater at Virgin Hotels in Las Vegas, Nevada to perform a cover of THE ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND classic “Midnight Rider”. Fan-filmed video of his appearance can be seen below (courtesy of Facebook user Jamie Adams).

Earlier in the week, Bach spoke to SiriusXM’s “Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk” how his collaboration with THE ALLMAN BETTS BAND came about. “Another thing that’s cool about these cruise ships you get to go on is you get to meet different musicians all the time,” he said. “And one guy that I’ve been friends with for a while now is Devon Allman, Gregg Allman’s son. And now he has his own band called THE ALLMAN BETTS BAND. And we did on a cruise ship. He wants me to do it again [Thursday] night. He’s invited me to sing with THE ALLMAN BETTS BAND. [Thursday] night in Vegas, I will be doing the song ‘Midnight Rider’ by THE ALLMAN BROTHERS [BAND] — in Vegas. Live. No tapes. No fakes.

“I’m an ALLMAN BROTHERS fanatic, and to be able to put a harmony on that song with Devon Allman and Duane Betts on guitar, I love that,” Sebastian added.

About a year ago, Bach said that he had finished demoing 14 new tracks for his next studio album.

Among the musicians who have assisted Bach during the writing and recording process for his new music are Orianthi (ALICE COOPER, Michael Jackson), John 5 (ROB ZOMBIE, MARILYN MANSON), Steve Stevens (Billy Idol), Devin Bronson, Brent Woods, Eli Santana and Jeremy Colson.

In January 2021, Sebastian told The Aquarian Weekly that he was working on a new album but he declined to name the record company that will be putting it out. “Yes, I have a new American label and I have been working somewhat on the album during this damned quarantine,” he said. “But there is only so much I can do in my house. I have been sending files back and forth [to my bandmates], but it is not as exciting as being together in the same room. Maybe Taylor Swift lives with her whole band. I don’t know how that works.”

He added: “My new album is going to be heavy. In many ways it is my follow-up to [2007’s] ‘Angel Down’. I am trying to make the best record I have ever made. There will be a lot of heavy [music] coming your way.”

Back in 2018, Bach told Meltdown of Detroit’s WRIF 101.1 FM radio station that he was going to ink a deal with a U.S.-based heavy metal record label that would help him make a “career-defining” new solo album.

Bach hasn’t released a full-length disc since “Give ‘Em Hell”, which came out in 2014. Like its predecessor, 2011’s “Kicking & Screaming”, the disc was released through Frontiers Music Srl, the Italian label which specializes in what’s commonly called AOR, a term that once signified a popular radio format (“album-oriented rock”) but nowadays applies to acts whose airplay is marginal.

Allman Family Revival with MARC F’N FORD and Sebastian Bach…!!!…at The Theater at Virgin Hotels Las Vegas

Posted by Jamie Adams on Thursday, February 24, 2022

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KIX guitarist Ronnie Younkins, who is unable to tour with the band because he has been placed under house arrest after repeatedly getting in trouble with the police, discussed his battle with alcoholism in a new interview with The Metal Summit. Asked about his current health status, he said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “I’m doing well. I’m an AA guy. I’m a 12-Step Program guy. I spent six months in a rehabilitation center, locked down. I went to court a few times; I had trouble with the law. And if that’s what it took to get me where I’m at right now, that’s what it took. It’s been a long time coming.

“I was sober and clean for 21 years,” he explained. “I was sober and clean when I was 32 and I stayed sober and clean — honest to God — all through my 30s [and] 40s up until I was 54. And prescription drugs — I was on a Hepatitis C treatment, the old kind — prescription drugs got me high. And quite a few other things were going on in my life at that time, and I relapsed. I went back out to hard drugs, then to alcohol. And for the last 10 years, I would go in to rehab for a month or two, come out and only get… The most I got [was] 71 days [sober] once. But that monkey was on my back pulling at me all the time. ‘You can sneak another one. You can sneak another one.’ It’s always that first one that gets me drunk, high, whatever. It might not be that very first one, but it’s gonna happen — it’s gonna happen within two weeks, it’s gonna happen in two months — it’s gonna happen, and it always did. And it usually happened within three months where I ended up in handcuffs and hauled off to jail again.

“I say this only to help others recognize that if there is a problem. If you think you have a problem, like I have, and still do if I ever pick up again, my counselor tells me, ‘If you do pick up, take your bottle. Don’t call your family. Don’t call anybody. Just go.’ And that’s it. Either die from drinking or end up in jail for the rest of your life. Those are the two options I have. Neither one am I gonna entertain by any means.

“I did everything that’s been suggested to me with the 12-Step Program,” Ronnie continued. “I thanked the judge for locking me down for six months, because I can drive by a liquor store now and I don’t crave a drink. I’m very close to Baltimore where I used to go score hard drugs. I don’t go there. I don’t go to a liquor store. I know it’s poison. I know it’s gonna ruin my life.

“It’s really affected everyone around me. That’s the worst part of this disease… Other diseases don’t cause bad behaviors; this one does. And for me, it progressed to the point… I went to one rehabilitation center when I was 32 and I [stayed clean and sober] for 21 years. The last 10 years have been so bad; this is my fifth rehab I’ve been to in 10 years. And I had to go to court quite a few times. I thanked him for locking me down with an ankle bracelet. I was monitored through the rehabilitation center for six months. And I couldn’t even step up to the sidewalk out back. But in that, I kept hearing everything over and over and over and over again. Not to mention my counselor; I have a great counselor. And he’s been monumental in my mental health and recovery, as well as everyone at the rehabilitation center I went to. I’m still connected with everyone there. Everyone that I live with here is connected with those people.

“On a daily basis, I do everything that I did at the rehab, and I still do it 24 hours a day,” Younkins added. “When I get up in the morning, I start it all over again.”

Ronnie is being temporarily replaced in KIX by Bob Paré, an accomplished musician who studied at the Music Institute in Los Angeles and taught music theory and guitar at several institutions, including Western Maryland College and Maryland Institute of Music.

Last month, KIX singer Steve Whiteman told Canada’s The Metal Voice that “[Ronnie] was pretty much being supervised in a halfway house for about a year. And I believe he’s finally got his freedom. So we’re just kind of waiting to see how he continues to recover,” he said. “Because it got ugly there for a while. And we wanna make that he’s got his family life together, his own life together, before bringing him back into this temptation that’s just around all the time. So we’re all pulling for him. We’re in touch with him. It’s a waiting game at this point — just to make sure that, unsupervised, he’s gonna be able to keep it together.

“I know the fans would love to have him back, and we would love to have him back, but it’s gotta make sense for everybody,” he continued. “And right now we’ve got the guy that had come in to help us out to replace Ronnie, Bob Paré, is just doing an amazing job, and I don’t wanna rock the boat at this point to take a chance. So it’s a wait-and-see game to see how he continues to recover and can he continue with his sobriety and get his life back together.”

Last November, Whiteman addressed Younkins’s condition in an interview with “The Chuck Shute Podcast”. He said: “Last I spoke to [Ronnie], he’s working, like, two normal jobs. He’s still living in a rehabilitation clinic, and he still has a ways to go. Even when he’s set free to go out into the world, like he did before, we still have to make sure that he’s gonna be able to stay clean and sober. But right now he seems like he’s doing really well. He’s following all the rules and he’s doing everything he can to get his life back in order.”

Steve went on to say that Ronnie was sober for 20 years before relapsing and spiraling back down into addiction.

“He got Hep C, and he had to use intravenous needles to battle the Hep C, before the newer treatment came out,” Whiteman said. “And we all think that that just kind of took his mentality back to the days when he was using. I mean, that’s speculation, and you’d probably have to ask him that, but it seems like that’s when things flipped for him.”

Whiteman previously discussed Younkins’s battle with addiction in a June 2021 interview with Sonic Perspectives. At the time, he said: “It’s been an up-and-down adventure with Ronnie over the past five or six years. Sometimes he doesn’t show up to gigs, and Brian Forsythe has to take over and play all the parts. Then he comes back for several months and does really well, only to fall off the wagon or get in trouble with the police. This last time, he got into trouble with the police and is currently in a halfway house under house arrest. That’s the biggest reason he is not out with us now. We were looking at Bob Paré a couple of years ago when Ronnie was going through a bad stretch, but Ronnie bounced back. When he shows up, he does great, so we didn’t make the move back then. This time we were forced to.”

Whiteman clarified: “I’m not saying that Ronnie is out of the band. We are just saying [he is not gonna tour with us] until he gets it together [and] his family and these people that are helping him say he is good to go. We are not going to bring him in until he is ready. He has shown in the past he can’t be sober on the road. Being out there in a rock and roll band is a very bad environment.”

He added: “We have a long history of 40 years together. You want to give him the benefit that he is going to recover and do well. There have been so many times over the last five or six years [when] we didn’t know if he was going to make it.”

Younkins missed a KIX concert in Pennsylvania in March 2017 when the rest of the group was unable to reach him. He was eventually found “not in great condition and very upset,” according to TMZ. A month later, his bandmates revealed that he was “headed to a rehab facility” and promised that his spot in KIX would be “waiting for him” once he was ready to resume playing with the group.

While Younkins was in rehab, he took time out to join his KIX bandmates for a performance in June 2017 at the Sweden Rock Festival.

Drug and alcohol rehab statistics show that the percentage of people who will relapse after rehab and even a period of some recovery ranges from 50% to 90%.

Most people do not manage to quit their addiction with their first attempt. They may try and fail a number of times before they manage to secure lasting sobriety.

For addicts that fall back into drug use, there is no guarantee that they will ever be able to stop again; their relapse may turn out to be a death sentence.

Over time, the life of the addict tends to deteriorate. This means that when people relapse, they may be going back to a life that is even worse than before.

Bob was a session musician for several independent label releases, and has spent most of his long career performing live in the Maryland and Washington, D.C. area with various bands, including FORCER, EVER RISE, PROJECT: EUPHORIA and, most recently, the RUSH tribute band SUN DOGS with KIX bassist Mark Schenker.

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Los Angeles quintet HOLLYWOOD UNDEAD has released a new single, “Chaos”, produced by WZRD BLD a.k.a. Drew Fulk (Lil Wayne, BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE, Lil Peep). The track is among the heaviest to ever be released by the group, yet still combines dynamic elements of rap, hard rock and alternative in a way that is authentically UNDEAD. The track offers the first glimpse of the band’s yet-to-be-announced new album.

“‘Chaos’ is about getting to the end of the road, thinking you can finally rest, and realizing it’s not only more chaos, but that’s all there is ever gonna be. No rest for the wicked,” says HOLLYWOOD UNDEAD’s Johnny 3 Tears.

A visualizer for “Chaos” can be viewed below. The song’s official haunting and artistically choreographed video, directed by Jensen Noen (ICE NINE KILLS, FALLING IN REVERSE, ASKING ALEXANDRIA), will make its online debut on March 3 at 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET via YouTube.

HOLLYWOOD UNDEAD will begin the “Kill The Noise” North American tour with PAPA ROACH and BAD WOLVES on March 1 with a sold-out show in Anaheim, California.

Formed in 2005, HOLLYWOOD UNDEAD has inched towards mainstream dominance under the radar. Preceding the current playlist-hopping genre-less boom, they defied stylistic boundaries from day one. Integrating rap, rock, and electronic, the seminal 2008 debut “Swan Songs” went platinum. 2011’s gold-selling “American Tragedy” bowed at No. 4 on the Billboard Top 200 with “Notes From The Underground” soaring to No. 2 in 2013. “Day Of The Dead” (2015) and “Five” (2017) brought the group’s total streams past 1 billion and “New Empire Vol 1” and “Vol 2” saw their combined streams across Spotify and YouTube hit a staggering two billion. Along the way, they’ve sold out tours on four continents and garnered acclaim courtesy of Rolling Stone, Billboard, Consequence, Alternative Press, Revolver and more.

HOLLYWOOD UNDEAD is comprised of MCs Charlie Scene, J-Dog, Johnny 3 Tears, Funny Man and Danny.

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