Rob Huddleston (Ann Beretta)
SPB: Did you use a different model guitar on the recordings of your old material (Old Scars, New Blood) than on the original recordings? How did it affect the overall sound, in your opinion?
Huddleston: The answer is yes and no. Old Scars, New Blood is a collection of rerecorded songs from every record we've released. For this record we wanted to put together songs that were less of a greatest hits and more like a current live show and with a few songs we wanted to revise them a bit to reflect the current band. I don't own many of the guitars used on Bitter Tongues as I gave them away to friends but, for later records, some of the same guitars were used. My guitar sound hasn't changed much as I've used the same Mesa Boogie Duel Rectifier amp since 1997 but for this record I did experiment a little with different amp and guitar combos depending on the song.
For all songs the basic rhythm tracks are played on a late ‘90s Epiphone Sheraton that was custom made for Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse before he passed away. I've owned this guitar for a while now and it's become my go-to stage guitar. Since we wanted to have a live sound and feeling to this record it’s the main guitar and sound used throughout. I've modified the guitar slightly by having Lindy Fralin put in some of his noise canceling P-90 pickups in. They give a great crunchy sound while reducing some of the noise and feedback created by hollow body guitars. For the clean sound I use either a 1952 Gibson ES-125 through a vintage amp or a Fender Nashville Edition Telecaster that I think was only made for a year or two in the early 2000s. I play the Fender through a hand wired Vox VC30 combo amp for anything needing a bright and clean tone. The song Broadway features this clean sound and is one of my favorite sounding moments on the record.
Another guitar that was played frequently on the record was a late ‘90s Ibanez Art Star. This guitar while not expensive also has a great crunch to it and is pretty versatile. It was my main stage guitar for the last few touring years of the band. I never really toured with expensive guitars and this one really took a beating. This guitar and the Fender were used as the primary guitars on our Three Chord Revolution album. The Ibanez was probably used a bit on a few other recordings also but i'm not sure which songs specifically.
