Slipknot’s Jim Root is a die-hard Telecaster advocate, but the Fender electric guitar isn’t very metal. That, he says, is exactly the point.

If we’re to play into clichés, metal guitars should be pointed and mean-looking, like they were forged in the fires of hell; they should be builds that wouldn’t look out of place in the devil’s hands... basically the opposite of the Hello Kitty guitar.

But for one half of Slipknot’s riffalicious guitar tandem, Jim Root loves the appeal of a guitar more commonly associated with country twang than nu-metal thump.

“There's a Tom Petty record [1982’s Long After Dark] where he's holding the Tele up, and my parents had it,” Root tells Fender in a recent interview. “So much of what I'm drawn to is visual, and not based on knowledge. It's, ‘Oh, that looks cool, I want that.’ When you see someone as cool as Tom Petty, I was enamored by that.

“Chrissie Hynde, Keith Richards, the legacy is undeniable,” he adds. “But John 5 was probably the only other dude who was playing a Tele in metal. By nature, it was designed for country and chicken pickin’ [hence John 5's gravitation towards it].

“It was the aesthetic of seeing all these rock icons with a Telecaster, mixed with time, place, and dumb luck, and wanting to go against the grain for a band that was labeled as nu-metal. I thought it would be cool to have something that’s not even close to being associated with metal in a band like that. There's a juxtaposition that feels like a fuck you.”

He also points to the rise of the Jazzmaster in metal, with bands like Loathe and Vianova some of its most prominent lovers.

Jim Root has released both Fender and Charvel-made Teles during his career, as well as a Fender Jazzmaster, as he continues swerving clichés.

“The whole punk rock and metal attitude is anti and going against the grain,” he states. “Everyone thought I should be coming out with some pointy metal guitar. No, how about we do a classic slab, iconic guitar? Like sunglasses, the classics never go out of style. There'll always be there.”

In related news, Root gave Guitar World exclusive insight into the making of his signature Telecaster, which arguably brought Fender into the modern age.

Melding sludge, punk, and riotous energy with an unmistakable gothic tinge, Witch Fever have jumped to the forefront of the UK's alternative rock and metal scene thanks to their unparalleled stagecraft and fearlessness in dealing with the most difficult of topics, both in their lyrics and beyond.

The four-piece – who recently embarked on a huge 41-date tour with Volbeat, released their critically acclaimed sophomore album FEVEREATEN, and are now embarking on their own European headline tour – have made headlines for shedding light on the harsh reality of touring in 2026.

In a clip that has since gone viral, the band revealed that they got to the end of an arena tour and “all our profit is all stuck in withholding taxes across Europe”.

Singer Amy Walpole opened up about their financial troubles on the 101 Part Time Jobs podcast .

“We’re broke as fuck – and we just did two months in arenas," said Walpole. “We also can't get a job because we're back on tour in March, so nowhere will hire us. I'm currently living off four grand of my late mother's pension that I got at the end of last year. This is just crazy that this is what the music industry is like at the moment.”

Despite the financial hardships and ongoing grind, as guitarist Alisha Yarwood puts it, playing alongside acts such as Poppy, IDLES, and My Chemical Romance in arenas and stadiums is a feeling that never gets old – and a privilege the band doesn't take for granted.

“For someone like me, who doesn't know theory or anything like that, it's been really cool to go on tour with a bigger band that doesn't have this huge ego and is willing and open to teaching you things,” she says.

“Going from what we were playing five years ago, only small venues, to stadiums and arenas... You cannot beat that feeling once you get over the nerves of, ‘Oh my god, I'm playing in front of thousands of people,’ then you realize you're actually doing it, and it's just the best feeling in the world.”

When did you first start playing guitar? And was it your first instrument?

My dad is a drummer, so I started out playing drums. You start playing an instrument, and you just feel like there's something more suited. I think I was about 12, and my dad knew loads of musicians [and] I wanted to start learning guitar. I just started to watch videos and try to learn how to play.

Were there any particular guitarists that you looked up to during this exploratory phase?

It started with my dad, but his kind of music is jazz funk. So that wasn't the kind of music that inspired me. Then I remember starting to develop a music taste in heavy music, like Deftones. I never really had specific guitarists who I was like, ‘Oh, I really want to be like them’ – [more like] music that I wanted to make.

I think the first heavy band that I was like, ‘Whoa, I want to sound like this,’ was Nirvana – that grunge sound and that guitar style. It was the first one that drew me in.

It's more the feeling on stage of just not giving a fuck, and just going a bit crazy and kind of letting something out. I don't think I really have any specific guitar heroes – just music that inspired me to play.

I've spotted you sporting a Jim Root Jazzmaster and a Gretsch Electromatic G5230T Jet FT with Bigsby. These are very specific models, especially in relation to your band's heavier sound. Why did you go for those two?

Before I had the Gretsch, I had a bad guitar... It wasn't good. And then I was really young, and I was like, ‘Dad, I'm in a band now.’ I was probably 17. And at that point in time, I wasn't well-versed in anything sound-wise. It was more like, ‘This is a cool guitar. I want it.’

So that's how I started playing the Gretsch, and it was a blessing because it's not really traditional for the kind of music that Witch Fever play. It's carrying the heaviness and picking up the fuzz of my pedals, and then when we play softer, more melodic things, it's so good at both.

With the Gretsch, it's taking a guitar that wouldn't traditionally be used in this kind of music, and then using it creates a different sound dynamic that you know isn't usual, and you're only really going to get something unique out of it. And I think that's what I look for in a guitar – ones that can push that heaviness and then apply that heaviness when you're playing softer, without any distortion or fuzz.

The Jim Root was a bit of an adjustment, because the Gretsch is so light and easy to play, and the Jim Root is so heavy – the strings, the gauge, and the pickups are so hard to control.

Are you a pedal geek or do you take the less-is-more approach?

It's something that, again, over the years, I've had to learn myself. When we started out, I had nothing. I had a guitar and an amp. So it was transitioning from that to doing something that I'd never done before, and learning how to use all these pedals.

But now, you can't do what we do on stage without having all the pedals. A big pedal I use in every single Witch Fever song for the past two albums is called Fur Coat Fuzz by Orange – that pedal and my reverb pedal [TC Electronic Hall of Fame] are on every single song.

You've opened for a lot of big artists, including Poppy, IDLES, Bush, My Chemical Romance, and Volbeat. What are some of the biggest things that you learned from these artists?

I've had recommendations of pedals and sounds that I should try, guitars I should use, [and] amps that I should use. The bands that we've gone on tour with, fortunately, have all just been lovely.

The only change in gear was using wireless. It was only on the Volbeat tour [that this started] – because we were using wires, but it just makes it so much harder when you're playing stages that big, using wires. My lead wouldn't reach the end of the stage.

Also, there was one incident where my wire – that had just been working perfectly every single day – just decided to stop. No reasons. It was perfectly fine while the set was on. It just stopped and broke. And then, panic.

When everyone's staring at you, you can't run off and cry, you just gotta deal with it. So we dealt with it, and then started using wireless, which was the sickest thing ever, [as] you could just go everywhere.

What would you say was Witch Fever's ultimate turning point?

I think it was when we got offered the IDLES tour. That was the first big tour we were gonna do. This was 2022, just after COVID, so we were all just a little bit deflated. And then we got offered that tour, and I just remember us all being like, we all love IDLES, and we've all been listening to them for however long. So then getting offered that just after lockdown, that was the point where we were all like, ‘Whoa. This could be something cool. This is a big opportunity.’

• Witch Fever's latest album, FEVEREATEN, is out now via Sony’s Music For Nations. You can catch the band on their ongoing European and UK tour.

Fender Telecasters aren’t generally associated with heavy metal, but that didn’t stop Slipknot’s Jim Root from slapping his name on one in 2010. The result was a guitar that enraged purists but was beloved by metalheads. Most importantly, Root loves it, too.

“It doesn’t matter what producer we’re with,” he says. “Every time we record, as soon as I play the white Tele, they’re like, ‘That’s the one.’ I don’t know what it is, but whoever selected the wood for that guitar did a great job. It’s not a Slipknot theme or a Jim Root theme. It’s just a classic workhorse that makes you want to play it.”

According to the GW gang, your signature Tele is one of the 50 most important pieces of gear of the last 25 years.

That’s wild. I still think of myself as a kid from Iowa trying to make it. In some way, it’s a level of validation that what we do matters. It’s a weird dream, because when you see iconic shapes of guitars, you automatically put them with an artist. I don’t know if I’m at that level, but I guess if somebody sees a black-and-white Tele, that’d probably automatically go to me.

How did your Fender collaboration happen?

I was endorsed by the Fender Custom Shop, and they wanted to push me toward Charvel. Their prototypes weren’t landing, so I talked to Alex Perez [from Fender's research and development team] – who, if it weren’t for him, I probably wouldn’t be a Fender artist – and I said, “Can we just come back to the Fender side of things?”

Why a Tele?

Just the juxtaposition of the Tele – and the purists will probably cringe – but just something you wouldn’t expect. If I walked on stage with a Jackson or B.C. Rich, that would be typical, so I wanted to take something classic and iconic and make it functional for what I do.

Was Fender immediately up for it?

I told that to Alex, and he was all about it. And I think Fender, at the time, needed something to, not erase the stigma of being an iconic, older company, but bring them into more modern times. It made sense, and Fender was down. I got lucky. The stars aligned!

What went into your Tele’s design?

I wanted to be minimalist with it. I almost thought about trying to see if we could lose the pickguard, but I wanted it to be traditional looking. I went with the modern string-through, hardtail bridge and the EMG pickups I was already using.

I wanted it to be a workhorse I could bash around, beat up, hit with metal pipes and get thrown into kegs without breaking in half. [Laughs] I wanted the fretboard radius as flat as possible, since I was fond of the Charvels and Jacksons I grew up playing.

Were you happy with it right away?

When I got the first two prototypes, I had the white and the black, and I’m still using them. They felt comfortable, hung just right off my shoulder, and the ease of playability was great for grinds, breakdowns and complicated chord movements, as well as some soloing.

What makes your Tele more than just a guitar with a name on the headstock?

I didn’t want to put out a guitar with a bunch of tribal S’s and my Slipknot number on it somewhere. One of the things we talked about was having my name on the back of the headstock, so if someone is in a country, hard rock, indie or pop band, they wouldn’t be scared off by the guitar.

Is that why your Tele has had longevity?

The classics never go out of style. That was my philosophy with the guitar. Trends come and go, but true things stay iconic forever. People gravitate toward it because it’s a classic shape that has inspired people. That rings true today.

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Jim Root has looked back on the development of his game-changing Fender signature guitar, and discussed why it was such a monumental launch for both him and the company.

Ever since Fender’s flagship Telecaster became the world’s first mass-produced solidbody electric guitar almost three-quarters of a century ago, the design has remained relatively constant.

Sure, the recipe has been refined to the nth degree, and there have been whole tiers of Teles over the years, but the overarching spirit has largely remained unchanged.

That was until Slipknot’s Jim Root came along and completely flipped things on their head with a signature that reimagined the traditional T-type as a no-nonsense, frill-free heavy metal machine.

It pushed the boundaries of what a Tele could be, bringing it into the modern age and alleviating the stigma that came with tweaking traditional Fender builds. John Mayer even praised it as what “every Tele should look like in this day and age”.

Speaking in the new issue of Guitar World, Root recalled the making of his signature Tele and explained why it came at a pivotal time for him and Fender.

“I was endorsed by the Fender Custom Shop, and they wanted to push me toward Charvel,” he remembers.

“Their prototypes weren’t landing, so I talked to Alex Perez [from Fender's research and development team] – who, if it weren’t for him, I probably wouldn’t be a Fender artist – and I said, ‘Can we just come back to the Fender side of things?’”

The Slipknot guitarist had his eye on the Tele, so when Perez helped him bring things back to the Fender fold, he knew where to start.

“If I walked on stage with a Jackson or B.C. Rich, that would be typical, so I wanted to take something classic and iconic and make it functional for what I do,” he explains of his decision.

“And I think Fender, at the time, needed something to, not erase the stigma of being an iconic, older company, but bring them into more modern times. It made sense, and Fender was down. I got lucky. The stars aligned!”

The concept of the Root Tele was simple. It had to pay homage to the original design, but in a way that would cater to Root’s aesthetic and tonal needs.

“I wanted to be minimalist with it. I almost thought about trying to see if we could lose the pickguard, but I wanted it to be traditional-looking,” he states. “I went with the modern string-through, hardtail bridge and the EMG pickups I was already using.

“I wanted it to be a workhorse I could bash around, beat up, hit with metal pipes and get thrown into kegs without breaking in half.”

Root’s Tele is one of Fender’s most notable signature releases, and was later followed by a similarly radical Jazzmaster and Stratocaster. And, although the Slipknot guitarist initially wanted to steer clear of the Charvel route, he did launch a signature guitar with the company a few years ago.

Visit Magazines Direct to pick up the latest issue of Guitar World, which features a list of the best guitar gear of the 21st century.

Last year, Tetrach’s Diamond Rowe made history as the first female guitar player in the history of Jackson with a signature guitar.

She also became only the second Black female artist to be honored with a signature guitar – her single-cut Pro Series Monarkh following Fender's multiple collaborations with H.E.R.

But despite carving her name into electric guitar folklore, she says one of her greatest achievements happened behind the scenes, when Slipknot’s Jim Root asked her for guitar lessons.

“I got messaged by Jim Root and he was like, ‘Dude, you need to give me guitar lessons!’, I was like, ‘OK, dude, come on,’” she tells Stereoboard, rolling her eyes as her wicked sense of humor strides forth. “I was like, ‘How about we exchange guitar lessons?’”

Rowe hasn’t revealed what tips were traded during their lessons, but it’s clear that both players have plenty to offer one another – oh, to be a fly on the wall for that!

Tetrarch's blend of nu-metal nostalgia and whammy-laden guitar solos has left many of her peers impressed. She's had the backing of Fear Factory guitarist Dino Cazares and Hatebreed's Jamey Jasta – but mastering the art of the guitar solo in a nu-metal setting wasn't easy.

Speaking to Guitar World about the challenge last year, she said: “Not many bands of Tetrarch’s nature play guitar solos, I've had to learn how to fit our style and not just play some dad-rock solo.”

During her Steroboard chat, she also revealed that, in recognition of how much his weird, off-kilter style of playing has imprinted on the band, she gifted one of her signatures to Korn's Brian “Head” Welch. “That experience was crazy!” she beams.

Rowe's rise with Tetrarch, who released their third album, The Ugly Side of Me last month, comes after a pact the band made years ago.

“When we were just 11, we were like, ‘We want to be one of the biggest bands in our genre,’” she recalls. “I don’t want to sit around and celebrate our new album for too long, because there’s still a lot to do. We want to play bigger shows and bigger tours and become a household name, and do this until we can’t do this anymore.”

As for common misconceptions about having a signature model? “I think some people look at a signature model and think, ‘I’m gonna put everything I’ve ever wanted to try into this guitar,’” she says. “But for me, I looked at it more like, ‘No, I want it to be what Diamond plays.’ So anyone picking up this guitar is getting something I truly believe in.”

In 2025, she stands as a modern-day guitar hero and a mold-breaker, and it’s a growth that has happened without ego.

“I never tried to be something I’m not,” she underscores, “and I was able to accomplish all these things organically on my journey. And now, something like getting a signature guitar winds up having a bigger impact than maybe I could have even anticipated. That’s a cool thing. And it all comes from just being Diamond.”

Ordering an electric guitar online will usually lead to a nervy few days at the best of times, but when this metal fan’s swanky new Jackson guitar failed to turn up after three weeks and threatened to completely disappear without a trace, he began to fear the worst.

Thankfully, the guitar didn’t completely drop off the face of the Earth; it had just been delivered to the wrong person: Jim Root of Slipknot.

In a now-deleted Reddit post (reported by MusicRadar), the guitar fan in question explained he had ordered a Jackson for his birthday way back in January, but when the parcel first turned up, it was missing a key piece of the package: the guitar itself.

Instead, the guitarist – who lives in Qatar and works on the US Air Base – received an empty foam flight case.

"I contacted my sales rep and I got a semi-canned response, ‘Sorry for the confusion and inconvenience,' with the added checking with the warehouse and shipping departments to try and figure out where the guitar is,” he wrote. “Now I am impatiently awaiting a tracking number or word of where the guitar is.”

The six-string went walkabout after the USPS tracking number went dead, and the prospective Jackson owner was resigned to the fact he’d have to wait for another to come in stock. That was, however, until he was informed of what had actually happened to his original instrument.

“All hope was lost in recovering it and I was waiting for another one to get in stock when my sales engineer emailed me this,” reads a follow-up post, which includes a screenshot of the email in question.

“Hey (name redacted), you might laugh a little,” the email reads. “For some reason, the post office shipped your guitar to Jim Root of Slipknot. We are working on the solution now."

As for how the mix-up actually happened, and what the solution will be exactly, is rather unclear. The guitarist reportedly asked if Sweetwater could ask Root to sign the Jackson, but it remains to be seen whether that will actually happen…

Hardtail Strats are the exception – not the norm – so when Fender releases one, it’s a pretty rare affair. This Limited Edition Player Plus HSS Stratocaster has found a fan in Slipknot’s Jim Root, who, back in May, raved about the web-exclusive model and even took it out for a spin.

When giving his initial reaction to the trem-less guitar, Root said that it was “pretty much an all-around versatile guitar outta the box.”

The humbucker helped achieve an “Iron Maiden-y” tone, while his favorite spec turned out to be the Player Plus Noiseless single-coils, as they provide “that saucy bluesy stuff." His overall assessment? “It’ll only get better after I spend some time with it.”

At its core, this guitar features an alder body and maple C-profile neck, with a 12" radius pau ferro fretboard, 25.5" scale length, 22 medium-jumbo frets, classic white pearloid dot inlays, and locking tuners.

However, several features set this Strat apart. For starters, it comes fully equipped with a powerful Fireball humbucking pickup for added punch, as well as Player Plus Noiseless Strat pickups that offer the classic Strat tone without the quintessential hum. And for added versatility, there's a push-pull tone control that activates the Fireball humbucker’s coil-splitting function.

Now, onto the hardtail element. It's a six-saddle, string-through-body bridge with block saddles, which sets this model apart from the typical, tremolo bridge-laden Fender Strat.

For all those salivating over this mere description, I come bearing good news: for a limited time only, you can grab the Limited Edition Player Plus Stratocaster HSS HT in Vintage White finish for $860.99 – a 30% discount off its original $1,229.99 price tag. I, for one, am seriously considering adding it to my shopping cart, as it genuinely ticks all of my boxes. In fact, I might have already added it…

Shop more Cyber Monday guitar deals

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It was 25 years ago that Slipknot dropped their self-titled debut album on Roadrunner Records.

And if the idea of a band made up of nine masked men in red jumpsuits playing a highly combustible and chaotic strain of heavy metal – one that mashed together everything from thrash and death, to punk and hardcore, to hip-hop and sampled sounds, all of it laced with a healthy dose of atmospheric weirdness and straight-up ear-bleeding noise – would not only still be around a quarter-century later, but also be a multi-platinum, arena-dwelling, festival-headlining behemoth sounded, well, crazy? You wouldn’t be the only one to think so.

“Not a fucking chance,” says guitarist Mick Thomson when asked if he thought major success was in the cards for the band. “We were just a bunch of stupid idiot kids.”

Nevertheless, those kids – Thomson, singer Corey Taylor, percussionists Shawn “Clown” Crahan and Chris Fehn, drummer Joey Jordison, bassist Paul Gray, turntablist Sid Wilson, sampler/keyboardist Craig Jones and guitarist Josh Brainard – created something that didn’t just connect with a large audience, but also altered the very sound and look of heavy metal.

In 2024, Slipknot may not be exactly the same unit – the masks and jumpsuits are still there, but the only members remaining from their debut album are Thomson, Crahan, Wilson and Taylor (as well as guitarist Jim Root, who joined late in the process for Slipknot and remains an integral part of the band). But over the course of 25 years and seven studio albums, including their most recent, 2022’s The End, So Far, they’ve built up one of the most impressive and influential catalogs in metal.

And it all began with Slipknot. Powered by two singles – the corrosive-yet-catchy Wait and Bleed and the rap-metal rager Spit It Out – as well as frantic and ferocious album anthems like (sic), Surfacing and No Life, the songs hit with laser-focused precision while also sounding as if they were on the verge of devolving into complete cacophony.

Credit this dichotomy at least in part to the presence of producer Ross Robinson, at the time celebrated for pulling raw, open-wound performances out of acts like Korn and Sepultura, who proved an ideal pairing for the band.

“Ross let us loose in the studio, and we went nuts,” Thomson says of the sessions at Indigo Ranch in Malibu, California. “He kept the intensity up. But, you know, he was just matching our level.”

For some, it was levels previously unheard. “People didn’t fucking know what to think or do with us early on,” Thomson says. “But our thing always was, ‘Fuck your labels – just listen to the shit. Do you like it?’ You don’t have to categorize it and this and that. Just ask yourself, ‘Is it cool?’”

Thomson recently sat down with Guitar World to discuss the making of Slipknot and offer his thoughts on the landmark record 25 years on. He also dove into the streamlined and somewhat surprising gear he used for the sessions, named his favorite song from the album and got honest about how he feels about the lack of guitar solos on the record. “I wasn’t super happy, but, you know, whatever,” he says.

At the end of the day, it all worked out. “Everything had to happen the way it did,” Thomson says. “It all had to be exactly that way. Because that’s what made the record, and that record is what made us.”

Let’s get the obvious question out of the way: does it feel like it’s been 25 years since Slipknot?

“I don’t know, because I don’t know what 25 years should feel like! [Laughs] It’s so weird, because a normal person’s passage of time is this sort of linear thing, but with us, we’ll be on the road, and then we’re off the road, and then we’re on the road, and then we’re off the road… It’s like I have these, like, two different lives that pause each other. So it seems like yesterday, but it seems like forever ago at the same time.”

The Slipknot recording sessions at Indigo Ranch have taken on this mythology of having been really chaotic and intense. How would you describe them?

“I think the way I see it is, it’s not that it was so intense… it’s that it was just us being us. We’re intense, right? So it was us doing our thing. It’s not like a bunch of innocent people were sitting there and some extreme whatever was thrown at ’em. We were extreme. And when we went into the studio we kept that extremeness.

“Instead of just sitting in the studio and playing, we recorded like it was a show. So the intensity in the studio was that we were basically playing our asses off like we were playing a show. We were hitting hard. Joey’s not trying to play perfect on his drums – he’s bashing the shit out of them. Same with me.

“I was literally headbanging while tracking the record, to get the vibe, instead of sitting there like a machine. And I think that translated to a lot of seat-of-your-pants, on-the-edge kinda shit.”

Was Ross Robinson someone you really wanted to work with as a producer?

“It was a dream for us. But also, he wanted to work with us. So it was very mutual. You know, I wasn’t into the stuff he did before, but I appreciated him and his work and his sounds. So it was great to get to work with him. And I’m a totally different person, totally different player, just for having known him.

“It really changed a lot of my priorities and got me to see a lot of stuff about music and the guitar and myself differently. It was just an incredible learning experience. So I love the guy. He’s seriously one of the greatest people on Earth – one of the greatest human beings you could ever meet.”

You say you weren’t really a fan of anything that Ross had produced prior to Slipknot. That being the case, what appealed to you about his work?

“Vibe and tone. You listen to that Sepultura record [1996’s Roots] he did, the thing’s big and organic and raw and real. It’s not processed. There’s a vibe and there’s a sound. And Korn’s early stuff, there’s a guitar sound, there’s a vibe, there’s a feel that’s in it, you know?”

How did you approach your guitar parts in the studio?

“Well, it was funny because I get in there and Ross has a Marshall, I think it was a [JCM]800, that was on the Sepultura record and whatever, and so I’m thinking, ‘Monster tone.’ But I plugged in and it just didn’t feel like I wanted it to feel. So I ended up using my Rocktron Piranha [preamp].

“My Rocktron Piranha with a dbx 31-band graphic EQ in the effects loop, into a [Mesa] Boogie 295 [power amplifier], into my Carvin cabinet with the 100-watt Eminence-made Carvin speakers that sound so goddamn good.

“And I mean, it’s not a great guitar tone. It’s whatever. But it was mine. It was what I had at the time. And it felt right. Would I love to go back and change it and make it into something that I would like now? Sure. But it was what it was. It’s very organic and raw and shitty. [Laughs]”

What was your main electric guitar?

“My Jackson King V. Three-piece Eastern hard rock maple body, with swamp ash sides. Ebony ’board. EMG 81s. And I fixed the bridge. I put a screw in it, and then I let the sustain block just pull into that when you pull the string. So it had better sustain and was a little bit bigger-sounding than stock.

“But I wasn’t playing that guitar live, because it was a Custom Shop order and it took me a year to get it, and years of payments on a loan just to buy it. I didn’t want to get it hurt. So I started playing Ibanez [RG]550s and 560s, because I could pick ’em up at pawn shops for 150 bucks.

“I’d get one of those, put EMGs in it, do a fret job and set it up, shim the bridge, and now I’ve got a monster guitar. That’s why I was always telling people, ‘Man, these fucking Ibanezes are just the shit. You cannot do better. You can go spend a thousand dollars on a new guitar or spend $150 on this used Ibanez.’

“So that was what I played live early on. Because onstage I would take Clown damage or Sid damage… shit used to be nuts. I mean, Clown used to use, like, metal bars and shit. We were very unsafe. You break the headstock off a $200 fucking used Ibanez it’s one thing, but a Custom Shop Jackson King V is another.”

Original Slipknot guitarist Josh Brainard left the band shortly after you finished recording the album. What was it like to work with him in the studio?

“Josh is a great rhythm player. So it was pretty cool working with him. He was really tight, really efficient. Just fucking solid. Easy to work with. I remember his guitar sound on that record was a 100-watt Laney AOR, and he was going straight into the head.

“It was modded by my old guitar tech, a friend of mine, and that thing snarled. So we recorded the whole record together, and we had a really good symbiosis there for quite a while. But by the time we came back in to mix it, Josh had quit, and Jim [Root] was with us.”

Was it a different sort of energy with Jim?

“When Jim came in, the record was already done. He played on Purity, but that’s because we did that one when we were mixing. But with Jim, we just had to show him the songs and go on tour. So it’s tough to compare the dynamics.

“Like I said, Josh is a great rhythm player, but Jim’s a way more complete player. There’s a bigger palette of things to work with. So I’m really happy with the way it worked out.”

Throughout Slipknot you use noise and effects to create an ominous atmosphere. It’s one of the defining characteristics of the album from a guitar standpoint.

“My weird effects shit! [Laughs] It’s funny, because the Boss GX-700 [processor] that I used for all those weird sounds, I’m still a slave to it. I still have those in my rack, because it’s the only thing that will make, like, the Spit It Out sound. It does this humanizer vowel sound, but it doesn’t do it the same anymore.

“The way that the digital shit is structured is different. It doesn’t act the same. So I have to use those old units. And these things are now 25 years old. Every time we turn one on I’m hoping I haven’t lost all my presets. Like, ‘Is today the day the presets are gone?’”

You could just write them down…

“[Laughs] Yeah, right? You’d think I probably would have done that. As soon as I get off this call I think I’m gonna open up the fucking thing and start writing down parameters…”

Another distinguishing guitar feature of the album is the absence of traditional solos.

“Well, I actually had some solos in songs, but they all got cut out. Because between Ross and Joey, guitar solos are stupid now. So…[Laughs] Oh, any kind of technical guitar playing was mocked and frowned upon. So, yeah, leads were stripped out. The song (sic) used to be called Slipknot, and there was a lead in that, and then there were solos in some other shit. But they were just massaged out.

“But as I said, I learned a lot from Ross, and that was one thing. I mean, we grew up in an era where you heard one to two guitar solos in every goddamn metal song. And it’s like, ‘Why?’ Just as a matter of course? It’s like paint-by-numbers. ‘There’s your template. There’s where that solo goes.’ Ding!”

As a guitar player, how did it make you feel to have your solo spots wiped?

“I mean, I get it… but it sucked. Because it was one of those things where I’m like, ‘I’ve spent my whole life playing and now fucking here I am, and... nope! Never mind! It’s all gone!’ You know? Like, ‘Just take it all away from me. That’s cool! Never mind that I sat in my room for years obsessing and trying to fucking do whatever, and then here I am and… nope!’”

Did you try to fight against it?

“No. What are you gonna do? Throw fits? Go, ‘I demand!…’ If it works, it works.”

Do you have a favorite song on Slipknot, or is there one that you feel really defines the record?

“I don’t know, really. There’s so much stuff on there and there’s so many different things. It’s kind of all over the map. So it’s different things for different people. For me, if I had to pick one song that I’d rather play, I’d probably play the hidden track, Eeyore. The quick fucking grind thing. It’s raw. It’s on fire. It tells you to go fuck yourself.”

I’ve always liked Get This for the same reason.

“Yep. Absolutely! I was gonna say that one, too. That would probably be the other one I would choose.”

At the other end of the spectrum, is there anything you would change about the record? Maybe something that seems dated to that specific era that you’d do differently now?

“No, because everything has to happen the way it happens. One thing I think is funny is the way you can look back at something through the lens of today and people will be like, ‘Oh, that sounds really old…’ I’m like, ‘Dude, that was so cutting-edge when that came out! People were shitting!’

“It’s like when you watch a movie from the ’80s and the special effects, at the time it was the most amazing Steven Spielberg thing, but now it’s just kind of cartoonish. But it had to exist. Because there is no ‘whatever is happening today’ without it. You know what I mean? So with the album, yeah, there’s a few things that I’d get rid of, that are dated from the ’90s. But I won’t say what!”

Can you give one example?

“Let’s just say there’s just some aspects of stuff that’s on the first record that could not be there now. And I’d be fine with that. [Laughs]”

Well one thing is for sure: Slipknot was, and still is, an extreme record. But one of the reasons we’re still talking about it today is because, amazingly, it also achieved significant mainstream success. How surprised were you about that?

“Utterly and completely. But I try not to think about it, because I don’t wanna tempt the gods. You know what I mean? Like, ‘Oh, you questioned fate! Ha! Dick!’ I don’t wanna push my luck. It’s like the Soup Nazi [on Seinfeld]; you just smile and be happy you’ve got your soup.”

Say thank you and move on.

“Exactly! Just smile and keep fucking moving.”

• Slipknot is out now via Roadrunner.

He was the last man in. When guitarist Jim Root joined Slipknot in the first months of 1999, the band were in the final stages of recording the debut album that would define them as the dominant new force in metal.

Root’s arrival came so late in the day that he played on just one track, Purity. The rest of the Slipknot album had been recorded with guitarists Mick Thomson and Josh Brainard prior the latter’s departure from the band.

But with Root in the fold, adopting his predecessor’s number 4, the puzzle was complete. This version of the nine-man band turned out to be the definitive Slipknot line-up, featuring on three more albums – 2001’s Iowa, 2004’s Vol.3: (The Subliminal Verses) and 2008’s All Hope Is Gone – that established the ’Knot as a global superpower.

And while there have been various personnel changes since then, the two-guitar axis of Thomson and Root has remained at the core of the band’s skull-throbbing sound.

Throughout all these years, Jim has kept on mixing it up guitar-wise – brandishing anything from Jackson Dinkys, Charvels and, of course, his signature Fender Teles, Strats and Jazzmasters en route to creating a crushing tone. But now, as he prepares for a tour celebrating the 25th anniversary of that legendary debut album, he’s been digging out some of the discount shred guitars he hasn’t played since way back in the day.

As he tells Total Guitar: “I’ve been playing around with some oddball guitars that I don’t normally play, like DKs and Charvels. I brought some old guitars out that are like 16 or 17 years old, and I’ve loaded them with my pickups, and set them up for how I like them. There’s two PRS guitars I want to bring out for this tour, and two old Jacksons from the early 2000s…”

As he discusses all the ins and outs of his gear journey with Slipknot, Jim also considers where he’s headed in the future. But he begins by taking us all the way back to those heady days of 1999, when the tools at his disposal were basic to say the least…

What did your rig look like when you joined Slipknot?

“When I first joined Slipknot, I think all I had was a Mesa/Boogie .50 Caliber [Plus 2-Channel], which I still have. I had that with a road-ready cabinet, and then I had a ’93 Strat with a Lace Sensor Gold pickup in it because I was really trying to go back to a humbucker, metal kind of guitar. And I think I got an Ibanez 5-something series, and the neck kept moving on it… I hated all the gear I had then!”

Did you know what you were looking for as you began to sculpt your tone?

“In the early days, I was just trying to figure things out. I had never used EMGs before. I’d always used whatever pickups the guitar came with because I couldn’t really afford to swap them out, and I didn’t work at a guitar shop or anything. But when I joined Slipknot, it was like, ‘Hold on… I’m in this band that’s a little bit heavier on the guitar side. I need something a little bit hotter.’”

Did Mick give you any advice to guide your hand?

“I needed something that would cut through because there were way more members in the band, and they tuned lower, a few steps down from what I was used to, and then they were dropping that tuning on top of that. So I was getting tips from Mick. I was like, ‘What gauges of strings do you use?’ I was copying his string gauges. We’d be getting them from the shop at the same time.”

When did the EMGs officially come into play for you?

“I got a set of EMGs put in a Jackson Dinky DK that I had with a green flametop, satin hardware, and a reverse headstock. I put an 81 and an 85 in that guitar, and that was really what I was using. And once we started touring more and gaining more notoriety, I was able to play with the gauges and come up with what I preferred for that low tuning. And depending on what guitar I was using, it evolved from there.”

Specifically, what did that evolution look like in terms of guitars?

“On the guitar side, I was trying to find consistent guitars that were built well enough that I wouldn’t be adjusting them every time I took them out of the case in a different city. I needed guitars built well enough that the frets wouldn’t start popping out since we were throwing them in the case and putting them in a big trailer pulled by a bus!”

And how about your amps?

“After I recorded what I did for the first record and then the Iowa record, I borrowed a Laney Pro Tube Lead Series, which was modded. I really liked the sound of that. It blended and mixed really well, so I chased that tone down for a little bit, trying to find amps that basically had the same characteristics. But I was so used to my .50 Caliber Boogie, and Mesa/Boogie were cool enough to send a couple of DC-10s that they were discontinuing.”

But you didn’t settle on those for long.

“I used those DC-10s for a while and tried using them in the studio, but they just weren’t cutting it. That’s when I really dived into trying out as many different amp companies as I could. I was like, ‘I’m just going to revolve these and find the one that not only works best in the studio but holds up live and is roadworthy.’ There’s a balance of what you like personally, the tone that works best for the band, and what doesn’t need to be taken apart and re-tubed every week.”

You eventually settled on Orange amps. What moved the needle there?

“I went to a NAMM show, and they had the Rockerverb series. I went to the Orange booth and just picked up the guitar they had there – which had single-coils. I plugged it into this amp, and it had gain for days. It sounded really snarly and had this midrange grunt.

“It had all the characteristics that I thought were awesome and would cut through, and I really dug the way the speaker sounded with the wicker in the front. Orange is really known for a stoner rock, doom, Black Sabbath vibe, but I said, ‘I’m gonna make this work because there’s a real midrange Marshall vibe that I like.’”

As you alluded to earlier, a big part of your tone came down to string gauges, which you copied from Mick. You also mentioned you began to play around with that more as you went on.

“That’s a tough one because each guitar has a different feel. With low tunings it can’t be slinky, but I feel like my [Dunlop] Drop B set is really slinky in comparison to what some people use when they tune that low. My lowest string is only a .56, but there are dudes out there that are using .60s. I wanted to keep it as tight as I could with the tension of the strings, but also be slinky enough to be doing bends and running scales and shit.”

Through all that, what did the evolution of your ’board look like?

“In the beginning, I was basically only using a wah just to give certain parts a bit of colour. There are certain parts of songs where it’s nice to put a little something on there. I’d even use a phaser just to give some wetness or something a little different. And I was using a Univibe for a while for some weird, almost crazy, filtered, wobbly noises.

“But honestly, there’s two pedals on my ’board that I’ve had forever: the Jimi Hendrix Octavio [JH-OC1], which is friggin’ awesome for octave fuzz kinds of things. And then I always have a [MXR] Carbon Copy Delay, too. It has a nice warmth to it, and you can also play with the speed where you hit a note, then you can adjust the warble around and make it repeat itself like a synthesizer.”

You were mainly using Jackson guitars and even some PRS guitars early on, so what led you astray?

“That was kind of unusual because Fender was giving me a Flat Head [Telecaster], so I was kind of endorsed by the Custom Shop, and I had two or three Flat Head Teles, and I love those guitars, they were very roadworthy. And then Fender acquired Charvel, and they made me a couple of prototypes because I was talking about going to Charvel for a bit and doing a signature model with them.”

Is that what led to your signature Telecaster?

“The Charvels weren’t quite what I wanted, even though I loved the way they play. Since then, the quality has come a long way. Now, they’re really well-done guitars. But anyway, my guy at Fender was like, ‘Yeah, you can come back. Though we’re going to do a Tele.’ And I was like, ‘I’m into it. I’m down for that.’ So, that’s when we started working on the specs for the original Jim Root Tele all those years ago.”

And then came your signature Jazzmaster, a guitar that most people don’t associate with heavy music.

“You know, I’m always looking for things to piss off metalheads! And apparently, also piss off Jazzmaster and Tele players! But, I mean, it’s a slab of wood with pickups and strings, you know? Who gives a shit about the shape of the guitar? Fender sent me a Jazzmaster years before we talked about doing a signature model, and I really didn’t play it that often. I thought it was kind of awkward-looking.”

What changed your mind?

“I played it sitting down a few times, and it played really well. And it sounded really good, but I didn’t think about it much. And then we were doing pre-production on something and I put one of my straps on it so I could stand up and play, and I was like, ‘Holy shit! This guitar is just so well-balanced.’

“It felt so comfortable and easy to play because it was right in the pocket. So I hit Fender back up and was like, ‘I know you sent me this Jazzmaster a while ago, and I haven’t given you any input or talked about it, but I’m using it at rehearsal, and I’m loving it. It’s kind of awesome’. Hey said, ‘Cool. Do you want to do a signature model?’ And I was like, ‘Yes!’”

Since you started using proper shred guitars, have Teles and Jazzmasters changed how you play?

“No. Well, maybe a little bit. When you first pick up a Tele or a Jazzmaster, you’re not sitting there thinking about doing neoclassical scales or shredding per se. But the more you play them, the more you start doing that kind of stuff. And then if you play the songs that are in your set that do have solos, it’s like, ‘Wow! They kind of rip!’

“Even a Gretsch Country Gentleman, the neck profiles on those things are nice and thin, and it’s the same with Jazzmasters. I’ve seen videos of [country music star] Roy Clark from back in the ’60s with a Jazzmaster, and he’s tearing it up!”

But now, with Slipknot celebrating the 25th anniversary of that mighty debut album, you’re pulling your old Jackson and PRS guitars out of mothballs.

“I tell my tech, ‘Just surprise me with what you’re gonna give me tonight – I don’t care what guitar it is, let’s mix it up a little bit and just play around’.”

Has it been fun to have those guitars on stage again?

“He’ll hand me a guitar, and sometimes, I’m like, ‘Whoa, I forgot about this guitar! Cool!’ So it’s kind of fun to do. I have these guitars that I used back around the time we were playing on and touring the first album. I still have a few lying around that I haven’t gotten rid of. It’s fun to do since we’re kind of doing this throwback thing, so I said, ‘I might bring some of these guitars with me.’”

And the word is you’ve finally given amp modellers a go.

“Yeah, I kind of took the plunge against my own better judgment and have been using the [Neural DSP] Quad Cortex for some shows, which, you know, is somewhat sacrilegious. I know I’ve told people I would never do that, but here I am, doing that! It’s been working really well, but I feel like something’s missing, so no matter how advanced the technology gets with digital, it’s still fatiguing to the ears because we’re analogue beings.”

Given that you’re a tube amp purist, was it just curiosity that pushed you in this direction?

“I’ve been using the Quad Cortex just for its effects along with my heads for a few tours, but we’re talking about doing smaller, secret shows, and the thing with doing that is we’ve got to downsize. So, part of it came out of the necessity of trying to figure that out without losing the effects we use in the studio and making things translate live, which is hugely important.”

Is a signature Jim Root Quad Cortex or modeling unit in the cards?

“I don’t think so. I don’t think I’d go that far. I’d like to work on it a little bit more and see what we can come up with for a rack system with a rack-mounted preamp. And I love my Oranges. I still have all my touring racks and my Orange heads. So, I’m still a tube purist. I still believe that’s the best way. It’s just a matter of making it work when we consider the smaller venues, even if it means taking a half-stack. They take up a lot of stage, you know? It’s a battle.”

You were singing the praises of a recently purchased hardtail Strat on Instagram. Is that a precursor to your next signature guitar with Fender?

“I would love to. If Fender were down for a version two of my Strat, I would be all about that. But I think I’m maybe a little oversaturated with the signature models now. I have a custom Jackson built that’s kind of based on the Virtuoso series, too. But I would love to do another version of my Strat. If I did, I would probably do it with a Floyd [Rose], like the guitars I’ve been playing lately.”

You’ve come a long way on your gear journey, so what’s your best piece of advice for those who are starting out?

“That’s a tough one because you can go down rabbit holes with this stuff, and you can end up spending thousands of dollars. Reverb is my enemy! It’s hard when you’re sitting around bored at night. That’s how I ended up with this DK Jackson.

“I’d say to maybe get some sort of modeling app to see what type of effects you’d use the most. And then, if you want to become a purist, base your amps and pedalboard off what you are using on one of those modeling things.

“Maybe you’ll end up spending less in the long run, but I don’t know… It’s always cool getting new shit, especially new shit that blows your mind, or when you’re using things in a way that’s maybe not how they’re intended to be used can be fun sometimes, or it can just be really fucking noisy!”

• See Slipknot for upcoming dates and ticket details.

Jim Root’s Fender Jazzmaster signature guitar is one of the most popular offsets of recent years, having served to radical reconfigured the popular indie stalwart design for heavy metal purposes.

Indeed, the Slipknot riffsmith’s brutally minimalist Jazzmaster has fans from all corners of the guitar world, and has been a key component in Root's guitar rig ever since it arrived well over 10 years ago.

However, despite masterminding the no-nonsense heavy metal Jazzmaster – and staying faithful to it after all these years – it turns out Root wasn’t originally a fan of Fender’s offset design because he thought it was rather “awkward” to look at.

In fact, it was only when he decided to play a Jazzmaster while standing up that he came to realize the full comfort and playability of the model.

“Fender sent me a Jazzmaster years before we talked about doing a signature model, and I really didn’t play it that often,” he says in the new issue of Total Guitar. “I thought it was kind of awkward-looking.

“It sounded really good, but I didn’t think about it much,” Root goes on. “And then we were doing pre-production on something and I put one of my straps on it so I could stand up and play, and I was like, ‘Holy shit! This guitar is just so well-balanced.’

“It felt so comfortable and easy to play because it was right in the pocket. So I hit Fender back up and was like, ‘I know you sent me this Jazzmaster a while ago, and I haven’t given you any input or talked about it, but I’m using it at rehearsal, and I’m loving it. It’s kind of awesome’. He said, ‘Cool. Do you want to do a signature model?’ And I was like, ‘Yes!’”

And just like that, Root began work on what was destined to become one of the most notable offsets Fender has ever produced, which followed Root’s equally radical Telecaster.

To many, Root’s choice of playing a Telecaster and Jazzmaster for his Slipknot duties came as something of a surprise, especially given the fact both designs aren’t widely associated with heavy music.

Root himself, though, doesn’t care what people think. To him, the shape of a guitar is completely irrelevant when searching for a model that can deliver all your tonal needs.

“You know, I’m always looking for things to piss off metalheads! And apparently, also piss off Jazzmaster and Tele players!” he says. “But, I mean, it’s a slab of wood with pickups and strings, you know? Who gives a shit about the shape of the guitar?”

Visit Magazines Direct to pick up the latest issue of Total Guitar, which features the full interview with Jim Root.

Fender has quietly released a limited edition hardtail Player Plus HSS Stratocaster, and Slipknot’s Jim Root has already taken one for a spin. 

Posting on Instagram, the Fender signature artist gave his initial reaction to the trem-less electric guitar, saying it was “pretty much an all-around versatile guitar outta the box”. 

The model, which has arrived in a rather stealthy fashion without any fanfare from Fender, is most notable for its hardware. After all, hardtail Strats don't come around too often, and the recent 70th Anniversary Antigua model is definitely an exception. 

It also comes packing with a Fireball neck humbucker. Fender says this delivers a “powerful balance of gain and definition”. For Root, it helps things get “Iron Maiden-y”. 

Root also singled out the Player Plus Noiseless single-coils, saying they provide “that saucy bluesy stuff” and adding, “It’ll only get better after I spend some time with it.”  

Elsewhere, the Web Exclusive Fender model – which joins the Player Plus line that first debuted in 2021 – features an alder body and maple C-profile neck, with a 12" radius pau ferro fretboard. It offers a 25.5" scale length, 22 medium jumbo frets, and classic white pearloid dot inlays. 

A push/pull control activates the Fireball humbucker’s coil splitting to maximize the guitar’s versatility – but, again, it’s the appointment of a hardtail bridge that particularly catches the eye. 

It’s a six-saddle, string-through-body bridge with block saddles that sees the guitar step away from the Stratocaster's whammy-laden lineage. The contemporary spec is also far more in keeping with the tastes of Root, whose own signature Fender models all have hardtail bridges.

The Slipknot-approved hardtail Player Plus Strat is priced at $1,229 and available exclusively from Fender.

In other news, Root recently revealed he used a Neural DSP Quad Cortex for some Slipknot shows, even after saying he’d never use modeling amps

Jim Root has revealed that, despite once asserting he’d steer clear of using digital amp modelers, he’s been using the Neural DSP Quad Cortex for some Slipknot shows.

The digital amp modeler versus tube amp conversation has hit new heights in recent months. Over the past few years, we’ve seen the likes of Iron Maiden’s Dave Murray, John Mayer and even Eric Johnson experiment with advanced amp tech.

Now, Root has joined that pool of players dabbling in amp modelers, and while the Quad Cortex hasn’t completely replaced his tube amp and pedalboard setup, it has been given a more prominent position in his rig.

The Slipknot guitarist says as much in a new interview with the Tone-Talk podcast, telling hosts Dave Friedman and Marc Huzansky he’s been using a new setup for smaller venues that recruits the popular multi-effects amp modeler.

“Just recently, and this is sort of blasphemous and sacrilegious, and I told myself and everybody out there that's listening in the guitar world that I talked to on my Instagram, I might have fibbed a little bit and said 'never' with the digital modeling shit," Root reveals (via MusicRadar). 

"But we have new racks for smaller venues and I do have a Quad Cortex, but I'm trying to do a workaround with that. And it's working and I used it at Pappy & Harriet's, and I used it for Sick New World.”

That latter show, notably, was a full-blown festival headline slot in Las Vegas that Slipknot played last month. 

Root is clearly impressed with the experiment so far – “It’s great, I love it, it’s working,” he offers – but is hesitant to dive too far down the digital rabbit hole.

He goes on: “I'd like to stay away from the digital world as much as I possibly can. But it's kind of getting to the point where it's pretty good and it's functional, and it's making things efficient. 

“But I'm still hanging on to the… nothing's ever gonna be a tube. You're never really gonna get that sag, you’re never really gonna get that organic feedback coming back. It is what it is.”

As well as detailing his digital epiphany, Root also reveals his plans to shake up his guitar arsenal for Slipknot’s upcoming anniversary shows, which will celebrate the release of their debut album by playing it in full.

That will see the Charvel and Fender artist relegate his usual signature guitars in favor of some old Jacksons – and even a PRS Custom 24.

“I'm trying to bring some of these old guitars out, especially since we're getting ready to do this 25th anniversary stuff and we're getting ready to play the first album in its entirety,” he goes on. 

“I have a couple of Jacksons and a couple of PRSs that I used way back to 2000, and I'm gonna bring those guitars with me and similar guitars that I had.”

Following a performance on May 19 at Sonic Temple Festival, Slipknot will hit the road with Knocked Loose and Orbit Culture for a North American tour. The tour will kick off August 7 and wrap up September 18.

The band is also slated to feature at a handful of festivals over September and October, before embarking on a string of European and UK dates. Whether the Quad Cortex will get a run-out at any of those shows remains to be seen.

Head over to Slipknot's website for full dates.

You need a specialised instrument when you are in Jim Root’s line of work. Slipknot demands a certain kind of sound. But just because Root needs extremity in his electric guitar tone doesn’t mean he wants to go extreme with the aesthetic. His latest of many signature guitars, the San Dimas Style 1, reflects his tastes of classic designs rendered monochromatically. 

The Stratocaster headstock here is on license from Fender, who own the Charvel brand. The doublecut body shape is instantly recognisable, and with that bolt-on maple neck, it’s clear the apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree. The differences are largely practical. 

Root is more conservative than many when it comes to his guitar’s aesthetic, with this being offered in Satin Black with a maple fingerboard, and Satin White with an ebony fingerboard, as reviewed. There is no pickguard. There is no tone knob. Anything inessential is gone. 

Some of the most unorthodox appointments are out of sight; the solid mahogany body switching up the recipe, a neck profile that’s skinnier than your average Strat and finished in satin urethane for speediness. It is surprising that the heel isn’t sculpted to enhance upper-fret access, but then you don’t see Root up there that often, and Charvel’s contouring of the lower cutaway performs a similar function.

There are a pair of Root’s active EMG Daemonum signature humbuckers at the bridge and neck positions, and a top-quality Floyd Rose 1500 Series double-locking vibrato for dive-bombing and, y’know, showing off. 

The Mexican-built Pro-Mod series is aimed at serious amateurs, jobbing pros, and a metal superstar in Root, and it is a lot of guitar for the money. The rubbed fingerboard edges add a touch of luxury. The glow-in-the-dark Luminlay side markings are now essential for serious metal guitars.

It arrives in a hardshell gigbag that’s sturdy enough for most commutes. If you’re touring, you would want to upgrade. But then there’s something so solid about this that you’d suspect it’d survive anything. 

For starters, the factory setup and firm performance of the Floyd Rose 1500 might convince those who have hitherto preferred a hardtail for playing heavy metal rhythm guitar. Mr Root is not known for tickling the wound strings. You are invited to similarly dig in.

The 12”-16” fingerboard radius is Charvel standard these days and arguably the platonic ideal for a high-performance guitar. Transitions from powerchords to lead breaks are rapid, with the 22 jumbo frets feeling very 21st century. 

Playability, of course, was one of the chief benefits the Superstrat platform presented. The other was tones with brawn and muscle, and versatility, too. 

No one can accuse this of lacking power. Root’s Daemonum pickups are based on the time-honoured EMG 81/60 pickup combo that had become the industry standard for weaponising metal riffs, and they feature a similar construction. But through EMG’s Retro Active preamp, these open-coil humbuckers offer a more dynamic performance.

At full bore, they’re still breathtakingly unsubtle. Hit a downtuned open chord and they are all string detail and venom, utterly bruising when palm-muted, with a lead sound that is capable of drawing blood. Pull back on the volume control and they calm down. The cleans are precise and bright, brilliant with a chorus pedal to widen them further.

Altogether, they’re hardly PAF-alike but we’d argue they’re a little less compressed than the unstinting message discipline of the 81/60s that you’d find on Root’s signature Fender Stratocaster. In feel and tone, these guitars are not a million miles away from one another.

The Strat has a six-saddle string-through-body hardtail bridge. The Floyd Rose makes this a more attractive proposition for flamboyant lead players and it is a superb feat of engineering. The firm vibrato setup is very pleasing. You can go nuts on the whammy bar for your designated eight bars of gonzo lead and it’ll return to pitch perfectly. 

Charvel has some real doozies in the Pro-Mod catalogue. Root’s San Dimas Style 1 is right up there. It’s not quite as versatile as some of the HSS models, and its minimalist aesthetic might be too utilitarian for some, but it’s a fun ride, and adequately powered for the noble art of pummelling metal chug.

Specs

• PRICE: $1,499 / £1,549
• ORIGIN: Mexico
• TYPE: Solid-body electric guitar
• BODY: Mahogany 
• NECK: Maple, bolt-on
• SCALE: 25.5”
• FINGERBOARD: Ebony, 12”-16” compound radius with rolled edges
• FRETS: 22, jumbo
• ELECTRICS: 2x EMG Daemonum active humbuckers
• CONTROLS: Volume, three-way blade pickup selector switch
• HARDWARE: Floyd Rose 1500 Series double-locking vibrato, Charvel-branded sealed die-cast tuners, black
• FINISH: Satin Black, Satin White [as reviewed]
• CONTACT: Charvel

On album and onstage, Slipknot guitarists Jim Root and Mick Thomson work together as a team. Both play rhythm and lead tracks, and both feed off the energy and excitement of the other’s musicianship. They also equally enjoy a dizzying variety of textural passages and rib-kicking riffs.

So, amid the firestorm of barrelling beats, pummelling percussion, screeching samples, DJ scratching and vocal acrobatics, how can you tell if a guitar part you’re hearing is coming from Root or Thomson? 

The easiest way is to pay attention to which direction the sound is coming from (this is easily accomplished with headphones). Root’s parts are always in the left part of the stereo mix and Thomson’s are always on the right. The same goes for their live shows.

But what if the listener is cranking the band’s tunes on a mono Bluetooth speaker? Well, there are other ways to tell the differences between the two players.

“We’re really different kinds of players, but we complement each other really well,” Thomson says. “What isn’t in my wheelhouse is in Jim’s. He’s more of a rock guy and I’m more of a technical metal player. He’s got a great touch and plays legato, and I play some of the more offbeat stuff.”

Can you describe your working relationship?

Thomson: “When you play with somebody for long enough, you develop a seventh sense. Me and Jim know each other well enough that without thinking about it consciously, he automatically adapts to playing along with whatever I’m doing. I guarantee he can anticipate when a note’s gonna come out of me, just as I can with him.” 

What should listeners keep an ear out for to tell the two of you apart?

Root: “I’m a liquid sort of organic guy and he’s more like, ‘Here I am. I’m gonna lay it down and it’s in your fucking face and it’s gonna be powerful.’ I like to mix alternate picking with legato and I’m a little bit more fluid than Mick. But Mick understands theory and tries to put it in place a lot more than I do. I’m more of an instinct player. Even if I play something out of key, I don’t care because sometimes that shit works and creates something you wouldn’t normally get.”

There’s a push-pull dynamic to Slipknot’s guitar parts.

Thomson: “I tend to rush stuff a little bit. I can be really on top of shit and pushing it, and he’ll lay back a little bit more. I have a more staccato, shorter, barky guitar attack and Jim’s got a fatter, raw tone. 

“His playing is a bit looser and mine’s more tight. If we both played the same guitar, I think his chug would be a little bigger and fatter just from the way he holds his pick. And it’s funny ’cause he plays with a lot more gain than I do.”

Did you pre-write the leads for The End, So Far?

Root: “I have different phases of guitar playing that I go through. There’s the woodshedding phase where your muscle memory’s really great around the fretboard. And then you have your writing mode. For me, that’s when I throw all the woodshedding and muscle memory out the window and focus on the songs and the riffs. And that’s the phase I was in when we were recording. 

“I’m kind of bummed because I was really out of practice when we tracked the record. I was insecure about playing the guitar and doing the solos. I was just like, ‘Shit, why now?’ If we had time, I’d like to go back and reapproach some of the solos.”

Thomson: “We didn’t write any of the solos. What you hear on the record is what came out when I had a guitar in my hand and Joe said, ‘Okay, go.’ It wasn’t a big, epic thing. If there were any bigger, more involved leads, I probably would have sat down, felt it out, built it and taken it someplace instead of recording a bunch of random, sporadic shit that came out of my brain once that afternoon and now has to stand the test of time.”

It sounds like there’s more whammy bar playing in the solos. Which one of you brought that to the album?

Thomson: “That was me. I bought a couple of Jackson Dinky guitars with whammies on Reverb.com and brought them into the studio. I even got a fucking Jackson sustainer, so I went nuts with the wang bar on a bunch of spots ’cause I was having fun. I’ve only played hardtails ever since we started recording. I literally drove to Simi Valley to pick up these guitars and then used them to record my solos.”

• The End, So Far is out now via Roadrunner.

For many bands who wrote albums during the pandemic lockdown, having extra time to compose and experiment was a bittersweet bonus. It allowed them to try new techniques, then revisit and fine-tune songs months after they were first tracked. 

Artists had the flexibility to upgrade their home studios and record in multiple locations. Fiddling while Rome burned provided a temporary escape from a decaying world and an outlet to funnel their anger and frustration. All good things in a tragic and frightening time.

Listening to Slipknot’s seventh studio album, The End, So Far, suggests the nine-piece wrecking machine benefited from such a chance to explore a wide range of musical options, from moody and melodic elegies to vicious and chaotic tirades. 

Throughout the record, ambient, effect-laden sounds collide with chuggy, downtuned riffs and tempos reel from sluggish to torrential, often in the same song. Like their last album, 2019’s We Are Not Your Kind, atmospheric interstitials are bookended by a schizophrenic hybrid of pop hooks, raging riffs and enough rhythmic variation to bewilder and enthrall.   

“We’re not just five guys up there playing metal songs like, say, Anthrax, Exodus or Testament. There’s so much more going on,” says guitarist Jim Root of Slipknot’s sawn-off-shotgun-to-the-head approach. “There’s orchestration going on with [keyboardist] Sid [Wilson] and [DJ and sampler] Craig [Jones]. There’s melodic vocals and screaming and piano and samples and all these layers and music styles.”

The End, So Far may not be Slipknot’s most accessible album, but it’s arguably their most eclectic and enduring, an inescapable, enigmatic nightmare of sound that alternately soothes, stomps and slashes. Many of the songs will instantly appeal to fans of the band’s tribal death, thrash and new-American-metal classics like Pyschosocial, People = Shit, and Duality. 

However, hordes of “maggots” (the historic diehards) will likely be dismayed by some of the other tracks. Slipknot seem to take a perverse glee in this inevitability, which may explain why they open the album with Adderall, a melancholy, cinematic cut redolent of Radiohead and Trent Reznor. Sampled choir snippets merge with layered atmospheric guitars, fraying the nerves without a single distorted power chord. 

Elsewhere, Medicine for the Dead blends warbling industrial noises into a melange of evocative arpeggios, clanking xylophones and palm-muted guitar chugs, and De Sade intertwines militant beats, a honey-sweet chorus and glistening guitar shards with shreddy leads. The End, So Far includes bluesy bits, some soulful crooning and tons of swooshing, pulsing effects you definitely won’t find on an Anthrax album. 

“I don’t think we intentionally did anything to piss anyone off,” says second guitarist Mick Thomson. “But I know some people are gonna hate it, and I don’t give a shit about what they have to say on the internet about how much I suck. I don’t even read anything on there that has to do with music [imitates blog post]: ‘Fuck those guys! Fucking sellouts!’ [implies blasé response]: ‘That’s fine. That’s wonderful. Have a great day. Oh, and your mom says you gotta fucking take the garbage out after your fucking homework’s done.’

Considering the intricate yet coherent results, what’s most striking about The End, So Far is that Slipknot had neither an abundance of time to work on the album nor a surfeit of material to choose from. When they entered the studio with co-producer Joe Barresi, demos were half-formed, Root – usually one of the band’s main songwriters – was almost too bummed out to pick up his guitar, and no one had rehearsed the chunks of music that were being considered.

“We were flying by the seat of our pants,” Root says. “Someone would go, ‘Okay, this is all we got. This is what we’re gonna build from.’ And we’d be off. I’d listen to something and go, ‘This is what I want to play on.’ I’d turn to Mick and go, ‘Okay, we want two guitar parts here that are different. Do you want to take the low one or the high one?’ And maybe he’d say, ‘I like the low one.’ And we’d play together until we came up with something.”

The situation was a producer’s second-worst nightmare. The only more stressful scenario is when everyone in a band is either constantly drunk, strung out on drugs or feeling left out of the creative process, as was the situation for Slipknot’s 2008 album, All Hope Is Gone. 

Having mixed the last two Slipknot albums, however, Barresi was prepared for the unusual. He just wasn’t completely ready for the avant-jazz-style sessions that went down at his home studio and at Henson Studios in Los Angeles. Equally unsure of the outcome, everyone entrenched themselves and started spitting ideas. And alchemy occurred.

In a series of revealing and fascinating conversations, Root and Thomson address the extemporaneous recording style that yielded one of Slipknot’s most dizzying and cathartic albums, the setbacks that threatened to cripple their efforts, how they conjured mind-bending noises out of the ether and how they’ve made it through more than 25 years by adapting to, learning from and maximizing every bizarre scenario in which they find themselves.

I: The art of random chaos

Your 2019 album, We Are Not Your Kind, was filled with experimental interludes and structured almost like an epic, conceptual piece. The End, So Far is just as creative and artistic, but it seems more like the product of an attention deficit-afflicted nation being bombarded with a vast array of stimuli. 

Was the goal to take contrasting clusters of noise and melody and stitch them together in a way that somehow holds up as resolutely as an AC/DC album?

Mick Thomson: “There’s never a plan. I’m totally against the idea of following expected paths because even if you try to do that, it doesn’t work out the way you thought it would. Even if you think you know what’s going on, unexpected things always happen. Life always changes. 

Jim Root: “Our sound comes in part from constantly changing up the formula. We’re still trying to evolve as a band, and I am trying to evolve as a songwriter. And now we’ve got our new bassist Allesandro [Alex Venturella] (ex-Krokodil, Cry for Silence), and he’s an amazing schooled musician. 

“He was tech’ing for Brent Hinds of Mastodon, and he’s a friend of mine. I said, ‘Hey, man, would you rather be onstage playing bass or helping Brent out?’ He jumped at the opportunity. And then he brought some song ideas to the band, so that duty came off me a little bit.”

Up until 2008’s All Hope Is Gone, the late bassist Paul Gray and the late drummer Joey Jordison co-wrote much of the material. Has the band changed significantly with different writers at the helm?  

Thomson: “We’ve always been the way we are. Every song has a different story and goes through all sorts of different processes to become what it is. No one writes something and goes, 'Here, dude, check this out' and then there’s a song. It’s never worked that way with Paul and it doesn’t work that way now. Paul could write a song, but when we were done with it you may not even recognize it anymore.” 

Do you feel different about the creation of The End, So Far than about your previous releases?

Thomson: “So much was going on the whole time that nothing seemed fucking real. Now that I’m thinking about things and what we just recorded, it’s almost like a dream. That’s the way everything has been for me ever since we couldn’t tour anymore because of the pandemic.”

Root: “We were all crazed. We had zero time for pre-production and it was like we were learning and building and adding to this meal we were making as we were eating it. But we tend to work well under pressure and we got a great record out of it. 

“The only thing I’m really bummed out about is that we were so unprepared, and it was the first time we got to work with Joe Barresi as a co-producer. I wanted to come to Joe with our A game. I could sense a little frustration in him sometimes because we weren’t well-rehearsed and ready to go. We were still writing and working on the songs.”

Do you think The End, So Far is darker and more chaotic than much of your prior output because of the two-year horror show you experienced as you created it?

Root: “Yeah, because no one had rehearsed together. If we were gonna rewrite parts of the demos it was gonna have to happen right there on the spot as we were recording it. We were lucky that we were in the position to come up with these parts because we were layering the record rather than playing it. 

“It wasn’t my favorite way to make a record, and [it’s] not Joe’s favorite way to make a record. But because of the circumstances with Covid and the fact that we all live so far away from each other, and we had a budget and a schedule we had to stick to, we had no choice.” 

It seems like you’re trying to create a puzzle with 1,000 pieces, but the puzzle doesn’t have a guide image to follow and the pieces don’t all have compatible parts.

Thomson: “It’s unglamorous, but yeah. There’s all this talk about the vision for this record. In reality, a lot of it is taking a part and duct taping it onto some other part, and then doing it again. But it’s not fucking throw-and-go. 

“Something might start with a part someone demoed with EZdrummer. Another thing could come from fucking riffs that were three years old that we jammed on. Everything filters through the band and gets rebuilt and constructed. But wherever it started, and whatever it goes through, it always turns into a Slipknot song.”

If you took the material everyone contributed to the songs on The End, So Far and started working on them today, having never heard them before, would the album be pretty much the same?

Thomson: “No. It would be completely different. That’s what a lot of fans don’t understand. There’s a nucleus point somewhere, and then the rest of the band comes in and all sorts of other parts change and morph and mature and grow and get cut and rearranged. Everything could be different at any time. 

“Right now, in this situation, this is who we are. If you gave us six months to go record it again, it would sound radically different because it would be a year and a half later. We’re different people. We’ve had different experiences than what was happening when we did this record. We could have the same vision. We could try to put out the same thing, but it wouldn’t even sound close.”

There are some complex, multifaceted songs on the album, such as Medicine for the Dead or Hivemind. Were those particularly hard to get your head around?

Thomson: “We’re always dealing with multiple parts that come from totally different directions. That’s just Slipknot. If we’re stuck on a part that just isn’t working, and you don’t come up with something within a couple hours, you’ll spend the next three days and then never have it. 

“Sometimes it doesn’t work and you gotta drop it entirely and sometimes you just need to walk away and look at it again later or kick it to [vocalist] Corey [Taylor] and let him write some words for what you’ve got. 

“If there weren’t words to it already and he comes up with something, that might trigger something else, and you completely rewrite it because of his lyrics. Sometimes we’ll get stuff back that he did a demo vocal on, and then we’ll be like, “Okay, that riff’s gone now and this other thing moves to the front. Every song has got its own different kinda weirdness that it goes through and it’s never really the same.”

Root: “I try not to get married to anything that I write. Let’s say I write a full five-minute-long arrangement. I’ve layered it up with five guitars and synthesizer parts and put bass on it and programmed all the drums for it. I might have put 30, 40, 50 hours into one arrangement. 

“When you sit up all night putting something together by yourself, you tend to feel close to it. But if I hand that to Corey and he says, ‘Hey, can you make this part longer?’ Or, ‘Nah, I don’t like this part,’ I don’t get butt-hurt about it. 

“And I don’t take it personally because I know we both want the song to be great and if changing my parts around makes him come up with a better vocal line for this part, then I’ll spend another five hours on it to get it to where he needs it.”

Do you ever pick up your guitars and just jam to come up with a new part or find a segue to a part you’ve already written?  

Root: “That’s the way Mick works. If we’re in a room playing and he comes up with an idea, he’ll play it over and over until somebody’s like, ‘That’s a fuckin’ riff! We’re gonna turn that into a song!’ Or I’ll show him something and say, “We need a part here.” He comes up with a lot of stuff like that. Or he will be fucking around with an effect and that will spark a song idea.”

Thomson: “But that’s why it was really fun to experiment in the studio this time. We’d have something and then I’d throw a bunch of other different amps up and go, ‘Okay, let’s try this.’ I would double a riff but then change it a little. 

“Next thing I knew, that doubled riff was the main part with a totally different amp sound and my normal tone had disappeared. It was just a bizarro process. It was almost a backwards fucking record from the way we’ve worked before.” 

Slipknot has always thrived on creative chaos. Does the band’s aesthetic rest on the idea that control is an illusion?

Thomson: “I don’t know if any band could ever have an entire vision for something and then achieve it. So we don’t even try because everything is dependent on so many things. Every one of our records is different because they’re reflective of all the people in the band and the input they have in the songs. And that input has a lot to do with who we are. 

“We’re all in different spots in our lives and every time we do stuff together, everything sounds a little different. Maybe one of us is burned out from playing something a certain way too many times, and maybe someone else wants a little more of another thing. 

“So, now we’re pushing in new directions we’re not even aware of because we’re processing it as you’re doing it. It’s like you let your gut direct you and then your brain doubles back later and tells you what your gut did.”

Do you think your gut reaction to a musical passage is usually the right one?

Thomson: “I think you can overthink things until you don’t know which way is up or if what you just did is any good. This album is looser and darker, but is it better? That’s up to anyone’s perception on any given day. There’s days when I love a song and then another day I hate it. But that’s what’s cool about what we do. You’ve got all these conflicting factors and everything is the product of these different people involved, So we’re always in a different spot.”

Does rolling with the chaos make you rely on one another more instead of trying to be the main creative force? 

Root: “To me, everything feels a lot more collaborative now because, in some ways, we’ve grown up to be inquisitive children picking each other’s brains. ‘Oh hey, what’s that thing you’re doing there? How did you do that? Will you show me?’ Or I’ll hear something Mick does and I’ll go and grab a pedal to see if I can come up with something that will compliment his part. 

“We’ve learned how to communicate and we’re trying to understand where everyone else is coming from. I just wish some of these songs on this new record had the chance to evolve a little bit more. Now that we’ve been away from the recording process for a few months, I’m like, ‘Shit, man, I have such a better idea now for that part. I wish I could re-record that thing.’ Or ‘I have this riff that I think would fit better in that section.’ And that’s when you see us play live – I tend to improvise a lot or add things into the songs.”

If We Are Not Your Kind was like your twisted version of Pink Floyd’s The Wall, with all the different interstitials leading into these epic songs, The End, So Far feels like a Pink Floyd record playing simultaneously with albums by Radiohead, Pantera, Slayer, Foreigner, Soundgarden, Ministry and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.

Root: “It sounds like it’s all over the place because our influences come from all over the place and we’ve evolved to the point where we can get that across in the songs. This band is such a cornucopia of different personalities and musical styles and musicians in general. Me and Mick are basically self-taught metal dudes. 

“Corey can sing anything. Alex is schooled in music, Clown came from a more indie rock world, and everyone else is very artistic in their own way and they bring their own approach to the songs as well.”

Slipknot isn’t easy listening, but, like some of the best albums by Mastodon, Tool, Lamb of God or even Yes and King Crimson, you have to earn the right to love it and understand it.” 

Thomson: “It shouldn’t be too easy to digest or even categorize. When we did Vol. 3: The Subliminal Verses, I was listening to a burn of roughs in my car in Des Moines. The guys in the band Cephalic Carnage were playing in Des Moines that night, so I was playing the songs for one of the guys in the band and he didn’t know what to say. 

“He was like, ‘This is just so different. What is it? It’s metal, but it’s not metal. How do you define it?’ And I said, ‘Stop trying to fucking nail it to a wall as something and just enjoy it as music.’ 

“That’s what I’ve learned as I’ve gotten older because I was one of those kids that went, ‘Well, I only like this kind of thing and fuck you.’ So I understand how fans do that. But music is a huge thing. You don’t have to put yourself in a narrow type of pigeonhole. It’s an expression of who you are and what you do, and if you’re true to yourself it just comes out of you and it is what it is. 

“That’s what I love about metal more than a lot of other music. You can draw from a lot more places. Punk always sounds like punk, but metal can go in a million different directions.”

II: Sinking into the depths

Jim, Did you play a substantial role in the songwriting for The End, So Far?

Root: “Mostly, I helped shape and structure songs in the studio. But I didn’t write and bring in stuff the way I did before. I was majorly involved in the writing from Vol. 3: The Subliminal Verses. And then I got in a bit deeper on All Hope Is Gone. 

“I wrote most of .5 The Gray Chapter and We Are Not Your Kind. But then the pandemic happened and nobody could be together. I was home alone and I got stressed out and depressed. So my contribution was minimal for this. It’s a good thing we had Alex stepping forward and picking up some of the slack along with [percussionist and artistic coordinator M. Shawn Crahan] Clown, who’s becoming a lot more involved in song arranging.”

Did Alex’s ideas fit into the nebulous metal realm of Slipknot?

Root: “When I first heard a lot of the arrangements, I thought, 'Oh fuck, this doesn’t sound like Slipknot to me. We’ve got a lot of work to do.' I was kind of freaked out. What I heard was the symptom of having somebody that isn’t in our age group and wasn’t influenced by the same music. 

“Alex was a Slipknot fan so he sounds like somebody that was influenced by Slipknot trying to write for Slipknot. But he had some good ideas, so we Frankensteined a couple of different parts between me, Alex and Clown, and things started to take shape. It was a huge group effort, but I was grateful Alex wrote the stuff he did because it taught me – not just about songwriting and arranging – but also about humanity, humility, ego and friendship. 

Even if you weren’t able to write songs, did picking up the guitar during the pandemic help take your mind off the state of the world?”

Root: ”No, guitars were depressing me. Everything was depressing me. It’s weird how the wires in your brain will cross up and whereas previously the guitar was an outlet for me to escape stuff, this time when I looked at it, it just reminded me of all the things that I wasn’t able to do because of Covid. So, this positive force in my life turned into this negative thing, which would’ve been absolutely fucking horrifying if I hadn’t been able to pull myself out of it. 

“Now I pick up a guitar and I’m like, ‘What would I do without this?’ But back then, I was so far from that place. I was losing any sense of positivity. I had zero purpose at all. And I thought, ‘What difference does it make if I’m here or if I’m not here? What good is my existence? I’ve pretty much accomplished everything in life that I’ve set out to accomplish. How do I set new goals and why should I bother?’ That’s what was going through my head and it was scary.”

Once you came out of your funk, were you able to write again? 

Root: “I tried to do some stuff. If I had felt a little more confident and positive, I would’ve said, “Oh, this is great. I’ve got all this downtime to sit and write and be creative.” I normally write in my house, but I had a bad leak and there was water damage so I had to try to find someplace different to set up my computer and write. 

“It just didn’t feel right and gave me anxiety to try to work that way, which made me give up trying. I wasn’t in my comfort zone even being by myself. I was trapped in my head and I overthought everything. 

“I was thinking about a bad relationship I was dealing with and trying to figure out the problem. ‘Am I the problem? Do I need to try harder?’ I was questioning everything and coming up with no answers and getting more depressed. I got to the point where I was really struggling to even want to see the next day.”

That’s bad. What did you do to regain some stability?

Root: “Finally, I got depressed enough and dark enough and sick enough of my own shit that I reached out for help and started seeing a therapist. And that really helped. They say men only seek out therapy as a necessity. They won’t go unless it’s their last resort.”

Did a doctor prescribe you antidepressants or anti-anxiety meds?

Root: “I think that might have been part of the problem. I have a lot of social anxiety and I’m a pretty introverted person. Whenever I’ve talked to a doctor in the past, they’ve prescribed me [antidepressants] like Wellbutrin or Zoloft. I’ve tried taking those things, and after about a week or two they seem to make my anxiety even worse and I have massive panic attacks. 

“So I don’t think those really jive with my chemistry at all. Instead, I was prescribed [the anxiety medication] Xanax. I felt like I needed to take something to level me out. I think I got too reliant on Xanax and that made me not care about anything at all.”

Mick, were you also in a bad place?

Thomson: “Basically. Yeah. It seems like every plausible metric is fucked currently. I was in a very bad place a lot of the time.” 

Were you angry and depressed?

Thomson: “Oh, I always am. When am I not? More than usual? Absolutely, sure. It’s been like a fucking horror movie. It’s the frog that doesn’t know the water in the pot he’s in is starting to boil. It’s turning up and we’re sitting in the fucking nearly-boiling water right now and we’re going, ‘Oh, this kind of sucks.’ If you woke up 28 Days Later-style, you’d say, ‘What the fuck happened to the world?!?’ It wouldn’t seem real, but in incremental steps toward where we are, you somehow deal with it.”

Was playing guitar therapeutic for you during the pandemic? 

Thomson: “It’s always therapeutic for me to be doing something with guitars. I’ve got pedals all over my dining room table. There’s guitars all over the floor. I just work on shit and experiment and play. 

“I’m always putting pickups in something or swapping out a bridge, just messing with stuff, adjusting the action and the intonation. And as soon as I’m done working on something, I’ll plug in and play with it for hours. What’s fun about it is that it’ll feel like I’m dicking around with something different and testing it out. So there’s an excitement about guitar because I’m being constructive. 

“It’s not, ‘Oh, look. Employment. Guitar.’ During quarantine, I spent hours and hours on that to get everything dialed in right. I played a bunch for sure, but my mental getaway comes from fixing shit and modifying stuff.”

Jim, after you went through life coaching, was it easier to start writing again? 

Root: “A lot of my arrangements on The End, So Far were things I had been trying to do on my own, maybe for a solo album, around the time we did The Gray Chapter or We Are Not Your Kind. 

“There were just a few songs I had written in the interim that I wasn’t really in love with, and a bunch of sounds and effects and atmospheric parts I recorded. I also did some stuff that was real riffy, but not songs. I handed the hard drives to our engineer and Clown and I said, 'Here’s some stuff. See if you can do anything with these.'

Did entering the studio get your creative juices flowing again?

Root: “I went through weird phases. It was time to record the album, but I was still in songwriting mode. There was one idea I had [for Acidic] that was really bluesy and I experimented with key changes, which I don’t normally do. And I found myself going back to playing a lot of speed metal and thrash metal riffs, and we recorded a lot of those.”

III: Salvation through sound

You worked with Joe Barresi, who has entered the studio with many heavy bands, but never one as aggressive as Slipknot. Did you click right away or was there a learning curve?

Thomson: “It always takes some time to learn each other’s style and build up that trust. But I wasn’t worried because Joe’s history with tones is unreal. Just the fact that he engineered the Kyuss records I always loved so much sold me on him. 

“Joe has a certain openness to trying different things, which I loved. He got me to use a bunch of different passive pickups with great effect on a bunch of spots. So that’s something I’ve reopened my mind to after 20 years. I play passives and stuff at home, but I wouldn’t even consider taking a passive pickup guitar to go play metal in somebody’s basement. 

“But dialing that back a bit was fun because it forced me to really dig in. I’ve got a heavy right hand anyway, so it’s not much work for me to dig in more to get more out of those strings.”

Root: “Joe is extremely knowledgeable about sounds. Fuck, listen to Tool [whose albums Barresi has engineered]. He knows how to get the best out of everyone. Working with him has made me go to my live rig, and me and my tech are reworking the sounds on my amps now. I’m gonna see if EMG can make me a passive style of pickup, like an HZ, which would have a different vibe from the compressed pickups I’m using now. 

“I’d like to dive deeper into that world and go a bit back to the roots of everything – using an overdrive pedal to get that extra juice out of the amp instead of jamming the preamp gain – that kind of thing.”

The new music isn’t always a fist-in-face attack. Just as often, you seem to express a different kind of heaviness with ambient passages and experimental techniques. It’s like you took a box of random effect pedals, connected them to an amp, and made crazy sounds for hours.

Thomson: “I had so much fun experimenting with all the fucking gear. There’s so much going on that it’s more in your mind than in the pedals, but there are all these soundscapes that you can create in all these different ways. This is the first time ever on a record that I didn’t have one guitar sound as my attack tone.”

Did you have go-to set-ups depending on whether you wanted a crushing tone, a middle-of-the-road tone or an ambient tone?

Thomson: “I had a different amp on every song – multiple amps on every song. And then there were all these other layers; we played with radically different amp combos. Joe’s got a bunch of stuff, which is like a toy chest. And I’ve got lots of my own stuff, too. The funnest thing was putting together non-metal things – different combinations that wouldn’t necessarily be your first choice for a metal tone – and then just playing the living shit out of them.” 

Did you come up with any combinations that surprised you?

Thomson: “There were times when I’d be playing heavy parts with a passive pickup guitar with a fairly low output into a Marshall 800 with an overdrive. I’d be picking real fucking hard and it sounds like I have tons of gain on there but it felt damn near clean in my hands picking it. You have to beat the living shit out of it, and a lot of that translated in a great way.”

How are you still around and making some of the most creative and powerful music of any heavy band more than 25 years after your self-release demo CD, Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat.? 

Root: “We’re getting to that point in our career where we’re all in this together. We all want to do the best we can for the role we play in this band, and when that becomes the priority, that’s when you put ego aside, put all that bullshit aside, and work together to make something great. 

“I don’t think you choose to do this for a living because you’re the most well-adjusted human on the planet. It’s just too hard to stay stable and your life is just too chaotic to have any sort of anchoring.”  

Thomson: “We’d be stupid to keep doing this if we didn’t love it. There’s too much bullshit. I think the biggest problem that breaks up bands is when everyone comes in with fucking egos. When egos and bullshit start to make a person nutty, that’s when problems happen and musicians start to hate each other. 

“Fortunately, in the first few years after we blew up, nobody’s ego got too far out of check. And that can happen real fuckin’ easily. You take a bunch of fucking dork kids and apply money and fame. 

“Someone’s always got someone in their ear telling them shit about one thing or another. And most bands end up eating shit because they just can’t personally navigate everything and manage to keep it together. I’m just glad we’re all fucking able to deal with everything we’ve experienced. And that’s because we all know we have our roles. There’s no I, there’s us.”

• The End, So Far is out now via Roadrunner.

All the way back in January, Tool electric guitar player Adam Jones raised eyebrows when he used a mysterious Gibson Flying V with a split headstock onstage at the band's tour opener at the Matthew Knight Arena in Eugene, Oregon.

With the launch of the Gibson USA version of Jones' signature Les Paul Standard in March, and the continuous teases of his seemingly imminent signature Epiphone Les Paul Custom, though, you'd be forgiven for letting the V slip your mind in the face of the Tool guitarist's other recent Gibson activity.

Recently though, Jones took to Instagram to give viewers a closer look at what he calls "the most BAMF Flying V ever" (we'll let you Google what that stands for if you don't know already), a gorgeous custom guitar that apparently was designed with assistance from Kirk Hammett, Richie Faulkner and Jim Root.

"This is now one of my top favorite guitars of all time," Jones says in the video's caption, "A stellar Custom Vintage Aged reverse Silverburst Gibson Flying V with a beautiful Murphy Lab finish. My dream guitar made true by my good friend Cesar Gueikian – thank you amigo!"

"I always loved the 1958 Futura headstock & [asked] if [the] Gibson team would be willing to pull it out of retirement. I believe it’s one of the heaviest Flying V‘s Gibson has ever made to date.

"The overall tone – lows/mids/highs – are amazing," the Tool six-stringer continued, "and the heavy body weight also helps me control feedback and sustain just like my vintage LPCs [Les Paul Customs]. I played this epic instrument on stage during the last 2022 Tool tour and it sounds and performs killer!"

The guitar, Jones revealed, is one of only three of its kind. Jones owns numbers 1 and 3, and Gibson's Cesar Gueikian owns number 2.

Furthermore, Jones rounded out the post by thanking Kirk Hammett, Richie Faulkner and Jim Root, among others, for "help/input/support and consulting." Custom Vs do take a village...

Jones' relationship with the Gibson Custom Shop hasn't just resulted in Les Pauls and Vs of late, either. Earlier this year, the firm made a one-off double-neck Silverburst EDS-1275 model for him as a gift.

We now know him as the towering lead guitarist of Slipknot, one of the most widely revered metal bands on the planet. But once upon a time, long before he donned the jester mask that would transform him into the Iowa juggernaut's #4, a young Jim Root soaked up the vibrant scene of '80s hair metal.

It was an era defined by loud outfits and even louder electric guitars, with Root citing the likes of Mötley Crüe, Dokken, Twisted Sister as some of his early influences. And inspired principally by the six-string arsenal of Ratt's Warren DeMartini, Root quickly developed an affinity for Charvel guitars.

“By the time I learned about the whole Charvel thing, it was the MTV generation,” he says “I remember seeing Warren DeMartini’s guitars – I was mesmerized by them.”

Without the money for a Charvel at the time, Root dreamed of one day being able to own one. And when he received a Model One for Christmas one year, that dream became a reality.

“I freaked out. It was a Charvel Model One with the fulcrum tremolo,” he recalls. “One humbucker and a hockey stick headstock. It was like a goal to reach, you know? I would always think to myself: one day I will have one of those Charvel guitars. And then there it was.”

So Root's all-new Pro-Mod Style 1 HH FR signature model – his first-ever with Charvel – is the culmination of a full-circle journey decades in the making. 

Arriving alongside his existing lineup of Fender signatures, the guitar has the DNA of an '80s shred machine, with a series of modern appointments designed to align closer with Root's penchant for minimalism.

Available in either white with an ebony fingerboard or black with a maple 'board, spec highlights include Root's signature EMG Daemonum humbuckers, a contoured mahogany body and, for the first time on a Jim Root signature model, a Floyd Rose double-locking tremolo system.

And Root is already putting the guitar through its paces. As he tells Guitar World, it can be heard on Slipknot's forthcoming album The End, So Far – as well as seen in the music video for its crushing second single, The Dying Song (Time to Sing) – and has earned a spot in his current touring rig.

How does the sound of the Charvel differ from your existing Fender models? Your Jazzmaster V4, for example, also features your signature EMG Daemonum humbuckers, as well as a mahogany body and maple neck.

“I think they’re pretty similar. Charvels kind of have their own thing, though, no matter what. And I think because the Jazzmaster is such a huge slab of wood it sounds more dense. And then you add the Floyd Rose to it and you’re essentially putting a tone chamber in the guitar. 

“But I think [Charvels] sound a little bit more like a traditional ‘80s metal guitar should sound. I don’t know what it is about those guitars – it’s the same wood and it’s essentially the same specs other than the neck profile of, say, my Strat, but they feel and sound different. They’re just different animals.”

Your current lineup of Fender signature models all have fixed bridges. What made you opt for a Floyd Rose on the new Charvel?

“Every guitar I had when I was growing up had a Floyd Rose on it. When I joined Slipknot, I think I only had one guitar at the time. They tune down, and I had never really tuned down before. I had Floyds on some of the Jacksons I was touring with [in the early days of Slipknot], but I blocked them off.

“A few years later, Alex [Perez] from Fender built me one of my guitars and I asked for a Floyd, and I tuned it to the Slipknot drop B tuning. I was like, ‘This is just like being in A440 [standard tuning] or even D flat – I’ve got the bridge nice and level and I’ve got this other tool I can use with it. So I don’t have to block the tremolo off.’ It’s a little bit more work for my tech, but Brad [Clifford]’s all about it.

“[With] every guitar I ever had, I was really proficient with a Floyd Rose, and then for 10 or 15 years I never touched a Floyd Rose, so I kind of lost a little bit of that. In some ways it’s kind of like riding a bike, and in other ways it’s like, ‘I forgot about fluttering, dive bombs and all the cool things you can do with a Floyd. It’s just one more thing to have, instead of hitting a pedal, you know.”

You’ve been with EMG for years. What made you decide to fit your new Charvel with your signature Daemonum humbuckers?

“I was asking Tommy [Armstrong-Leavitt, EMG Artist Relations Manager] to see if we could get into the passive world with EMG because I don’t think it’s something they really do a lot of.

“There were a couple of tracks that we did [on the new Slipknot album] rhythm-wise where I ended up using a Seymour Duncan Full Shred [passive humbucker], and it sounded really tight.

“I’ve been using EMGs my entire career in Slipknot – 24 or 25 years, something like that – and I’m so used to [them]. But the Daemonums come closer to that passive feel that I’ve used before. It’s kind of like going backwards to go forwards a little bit. It’s like going back to the Floyd, going back to a more passive feel of a pickup, having Alnico and ceramic magnets in them [so they’re] a little more responsive in the volume when you’re rolling things back.

“And with all the DSPs [Digital Signal Processors] like Neural DSP, I don’t really need high-output, highly compressed pickups for that type of stuff. Because those programs kind of get all that out of the way.

“When you’re using a valve amp, if you’re used to the forgiveness that something like Neural can give you, it doesn’t give you the same forgiveness, but it’s more natural. I think it’s a little more pleasing to the ear.”

What amps and pedals have you found pair well with the guitar?

“Everything that I’ve plugged into it sounds fucking great. I had an Orange that Adrian [Emsley, amp designer at Orange Amplification] made for me that’s kind of a mod of a [Rockerverb] MKIII that I’ve been touring with.

“I have a Friedman, one of the newer Deluxe series [models]. That amp sounds great, but I’ve been using a Bogner Helios Eclipse, that’s what my main amp has been. I use that a lot in the studio and I’ve been using it for all the live touring that we’ve been doing since Covid.

But every amp I've played the Charvel through has been fucking awesome, even in the practice room. Everything I plug it in through it’s just like, ‘Ooh, yeah.’”

Did you use the guitar in the studio while tracking The End, So Far?

“I did. I used a black one with a maple ’board [on] a couple of rhythm tracks. And then I kind of use both of them back and forth for a couple of the lead tracks. I also used a [Charvel] DK24 with a figured top – I can’t remember exactly what model it is, but it has the two-point tremolo on it. And I use that basically for all the leads – I just slapped my pickups in it.

“But I think for the most part, I used one of my Jazzmasters and those three Charvels for the majority of what we did.”

Did you use a whammy bar on any of the leads?

“It’s kind of peppered throughout the record. If there's a drop, or if there's like a break in between riffs or something, I would [use it]. Some of it was overdubbed in as third guitar tracks and things like that, but it’s there.

“And when [producer] Joe [Barresi] has you just go – he’s like ‘Just play along, see what you come up with’ – you’re gonna hit that bar every once in a while. That stuff definitely made it to the record.”

How does the new Charvel fit into your current live rig?

“I have four of them now. I have the first two prototypes that I used in the studio and for the touring in the states, and then I got two new prototypes right before we went on tour in Europe. So I have a black and a white one on each rig. I try to use them as much as I can in the set.

“I'm using them for Dead Memories, Before I Forget – I'd have to look at our setlist to remember: there's quite a few songs I'm playing them on. 

“I still don't know which one I prefer. I don't know if I like the maple fretboard one better or the ebony fretboard one better. Eventually I'll do neck swaps on them, and take the ebony fretboard off the white one and put it on the black one.”

Do you have plans for any more Charvel signature models in the near-future?

“There are no plans for one. They wanted me to do a DK24. Some of the people that I talked to via my social media are a little bit afraid of the Floyd Rose, and they’re like, ‘If this didn’t have a Floyd on it, I’d be all about it.’

“I just ordered a Custom Shop DK24 with a reverse headstock with the toothpaste logo. It’s going to be a hardtail. Once that guitar gets [made], and if I start playing it live, and if I use it in the studio, that can be a possibility.

“But I’ve got so many signature models out there. I feel like it’s information overload. I’d kind of like to wane them down to one or two.”

Your existing signature models have stripped-back aesthetics and spec sheets, so it’s not surprising you have the same ethos toward the number of signature models you have.

“Less is more – they’re so minimalist, but you can do so much with them. I wanted to keep them simple. That’s by design. 

“I feel like the less you have to think about the better. I’m not a blues guitarist, so I don’t need a tone pot. I flip through my pickups quite a bit. I tend to play a lot of my leads and cleans on the neck position, so I’m constantly flipping to that. But I wanted to keep the controls nice and minimalist.

“That way you can thrash around and move around a lot more without having to worry about hitting a knob or bumping the selector to a different position while you're in the middle of a song, which I still do, but whatever.”

Charvel is one of the classic ‘80s shred guitar brands. You were inspired watching Warren DeMartini on MTV's Headbangers Ball as a teenager. Who were some of your shred heroes growing up?

“When I first started playing guitar, I was listening to a lot of Mötley Crüe, Dokken and Twisted Sister. And then what changed my life was hearing [Metallica’s] Ride the Lightning. It opened my eyes to this whole other world of being a guitar player. I was like, ‘Holy shit.’ 

“And from that I found Slayer, Voivod, Flotsam and Jetsam, Megadeth, Overkill and all these other guitar-centric bands. And that appealed to me in a different way than guys like Warren DeMartini, you know. They were playing metal, but it was a different kind of metal. This was in your face, very extreme and very intense.

“Being a 14- or 15-year-old kid learning how to play guitar, you’re trying to push your limits of what you’re trying to learn – what better way than trying to learn Looking Down the Cross off of the first Megadeth record [Killing is My Business… and Business is Good!].

“That’s how I learned how to play guitar – playing along to albums like [Anthrax’s] Among the Living or Spreading the Disease, or even [Overkill’s] Hello from the Gutter or old Testament records.

“So those guys – Dave Mustaine, Alex Skolnick, Warren DeMartini, Scott Ian, James Hetfield, Kirk Hammett – that’s where I woodshedded and learned how to play mainly rhythm guitar that way.

“And then I went through my phase where I was into Steve Vai, Yngwie Malmsteen and Joe Satriani, but that stuff never really grabbed a hold of me because I need a song, you know what I mean? I don't want to sit there and listen to [just] guitar stuff.

“But all that stuff was born out of [artists like] Uli Jon Roth and the early Scorpions stuff, Yes and the ‘70s prog kind of vibe, which is really fucking cool. But prog for the sake of prog, to me, can be a little bit up its own ass sometimes.”

A lot of people will resonate with the idea of pushing yourself as an aspiring guitar player and trying to play the fastest stuff you can.

“I think now it’s evolved to maybe not the fastest, but the lowest or the heaviest, or the most odd time signature that you can find – think bands like Meshuggah and SikTh. [But that’s] a little bit beyond me. I tend to stay away from that just because I like the natural feel of human fours – everything in fours – because I can just move to it better.

“[That’s] not to say there's not a place for that kind of stuff. Because it's mind-bending to try to figure out those riffs and see what they're doing and how they make an arrangement out of stuff like that. But to me, it just falls in the same category as the Yngwies and the Satrianis and stuff like that. It’s a little bit of masturbation.”

Your bandmate Mick Thomson’s into the ‘80s shred era, too – he has his own signature Jackson Soloist. Has he had a go on your new Charvel signature?

“He picked one up and kind of noodled around with it a little bit. But he’s just so particular with [guitars]. Jacksons have such a wide, flat fretboard and Charvels aren’t quite as wide and flat. I mean, they’re pretty close, but they’re still different animals.

“At some point, we’ll probably trade signature models. He’s got a new signature model coming out – I think he’s gonna do a DK, a Dinky version with a bolt-on [neck]. And when he does that, I’m gonna have to have one of those because I love the bolt-on Jacksons. I think they’re fucking awesome. So we’ll definitely do a swap at that point.”

We saw you play a one-of-a-kind Black Paisley Fender Jazzmaster onstage last year, as well as a custom Meteora – will either of these guitars receive an official release one day?

“Kyle McMillin [Fender Custom Shop builder] built me those. I have a Strat, Tele and a Jazzmaster in that Paisley finish. They’re the only real Custom Shop guitars that I have, and they’re fucking amazing. But I would never do a Custom Shop signature model, because I don’t think too many of our fans could go out and spend $10,000 on a guitar.

“I would love to do another Strat with Fender. But since we just did the Charvel, I don't know if that would make a whole lot of sense. If I were to do another Fender signature model, the feedback I'm getting is a lot of people like those sandblasted Jazzmasters that I have. 

“That's a pretty metal-looking guitar – the problem is doing that with mahogany is too difficult; I'd have to change the wood and use swamp ash or something like that, which could be cool, but sort of out of the wheelhouse of what I normally use.

“I think it would make sense to do a Meteora in a sandblasted sort of way. I think that would cover a lot of what people are asking for as far as the Fender side of things.”

Is it a big consideration for you, to try to make your signature models as affordable as possible?

“I try to do everything I can to keep the price [down]. Even with the Charvel I tried to [keep the price down] and it was really hard to do. For me, it was important to have the 1500 Series Floyd Rose, my EMG pickups, the mahogany wood and a case, and to keep it under $2,000 was really fucking hard to do.

“That’s part of the reason they’re made in Mexico because it cuts costs a little bit and keeps it at a better price point. And I don’t think you’re sacrificing any craftsmanship at all in that way.

“I’ve played guitars [that are] made in Mexico, made in Japan, made in America, and they’re all very comparable to each other. They’re all right up there in quality.

“So it’s important for me to try to keep that price low. If I could do all of my signature models with Squier, or find maybe an Indonesian or Korean company, or Taiwanese, that could make it up to that quality [I would]. 

“Squiers are really good fucking quality. My Squier Teles are fucking great. I have one here that I need to take on the road with me because I told everybody I would.”

That would be great to see.

“Yeah, I just keep forgetting to bring it with me. Otherwise I would. I mean, it's really fucking good. 

“But, you know, to be able to make my signature models and have them come in at like $600 or $700 would be fucking awesome. Maybe that’s the next thing I talk to Fender about.

“Even your top-notch professional guitar players would still be able to find a use for those guitars. The prototype Squier that I have, I pulled it out of the box and tuned it up to A440 because it was close to that anyway, and at the time Death Magnetic had just come out. So I was learning riffs off that record, and was like, ‘This guitar feels really fucking good. And the pickups sound really fucking good, too.’

“I’m gonna tune this to Slipknot and bring it out on the road with me just as it is. [It’s] a $500/$600 guitar that I can just play, you know?”

Slipknot guitar covers are all over YouTube and TikTok. Do you ever watch any, and are there any mistakes you commonly see people making?

“I see quite a few of them, and I see all kinds of mistakes. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t sound like the song; it’s just that there’s so much nuance in Mick and I’s playing that, with the tuning we use, and with all the other instruments that are around everything that we do, it’s so hard to pick out that nuance.

“[But] there’s nothing major. It’s fucking cool to see everybody doing it and learning it by ear. That’s how I learned how to play guitar. And I guess I wasn’t hearing all the nuance that Chris Poland or Dave Mustaine were putting in their songs.

“Unless you’re sitting there watching the person who wrote the song play the song, you’re probably never going to be able to pick it out 100 percent exactly how it was recorded.

“Even Mick and I on the same record playing the same part, sometimes we’re not playing exactly the same thing. Sometimes whoever’s editing the takes might edit together what, to them, sounds like the best take, but maybe Mick hit an extra note in there that I didn’t hit, or vice-versa. 

“But it’s still pleasing to the ear, [so] it makes it to the record. And that’s what makes the song sound a certain way. It’s a bizarre thing.”

• The Jim Root Pro-Mod San Dimas Style 1 HH FR is available now. For more info head to Charvel. Slipknot's seventh album, The End, So Far, arrives September 30 via Roadrunner.

He’s been a Fender signature artist since 2007, and just launched his first-ever signature model with Charvel, but Jim Root is eyeing up more affordable signature guitars in the future, potentially with Squier.

In a new interview with Guitar World, Slipknot’s #4 discusses the importance of keeping the cost of his signature models down, making them accessible to as many of his fans as possible.

“It’s important for me to try to keep that price low,” he says. “If I could do all of my signature models with Squier, or find maybe an Indonesian, Korean or Taiwanese company that could make it up to that quality [I would]. Like, Squiers are really good quality. My Squier Teles are fucking great. I have one here that I need to take on the road with me.”

He continues: “To be able to make my signature models and have them come in at like $600 or $700 would be fucking awesome. Maybe that’s the next thing I talk to Fender about. Even your top-notch professional guitar players would still be able to find a use for those guitars…”

Squier launched a Jim Root Telecaster back in 2012, but the model has been out of production for several years now, and his subsequent Fender designs have yet to be introduced in Squier form.

Elsewhere, Root discussed keeping costs down on his new Charvel signature model, the Jim Root Signature Pro-Mod San Dimas Style 1 HH FR, explaining: “I tried to [keep the price down] and it was really hard to do. 

“For me, it was important to have the 1500 Series Floyd Rose, my EMG [Daemonum] pickups, the mahogany wood and a case, and to keep it under $2,000 was really fucking hard to do.

“That’s a little bit of the reason they’re made in Mexico because it cuts costs a little bit and keeps it at a better price point. And I don’t think you’re sacrificing any craftsmanship at all in that way. I’ve played guitars [that are] made in Mexico, made in Japan, made in America, and they’re all very comparable to each other. They’re all right up there in quality.”

Currently, Root has four signature models with Fender – a Stratocaster, Telecaster and two Jazzmasters – and one with Charvel. The Tele and the Charvel are most affordable, at $1,499 each.

Root’s journey with Charvel guitars has come full circle with the release of his new Pro-Mod San Dimas Style 1. That journey began when he received one for Christmas one year as a teenager.

“I freaked out,” he remembers. “It was a Charvel Model One with the fulcrum tremolo, one humbucker and a hockey stick headstock. It was like a goal to reach, you know? I would always think to myself, one day I will have one of those Charvel guitars.”

Regarding how the new signature model came to be, Root tells GW: “I have a really bad problem with buying guitars. For the past year, I’ve been buying a lot of Mexican Charvels, and they’re fucking great. So they offered me a signature model [and] I was like, ‘Okay, as long as I’m not getting kicked out of Fender I’m down.’”

The Jim Root Signature Pro-Mod San Dimas Style 1 HH FR – the Slipknot guitarist's first-ever signature guitar with Charvel – has officially landed.

Announced in June, the new six-string shares the same minimalist aesthetic as Root’s existing Fender signature models, and is available in either Satin White with an ebony fingerboard or Satin Black with a maple ‘board.

The guitar features a contoured mahogany body with a scalloped lower back bout for greater upper-fret access, graphite-reinforced bolt-on maple neck, and a 12”-16” compound radius fingerboard with rolled edges and 22 jumbo frets.

Root’s Charvel retains the same straightforward approach to electronics as his existing lineup of Fender signature models, with a pair of his signature EMG Daemonum active humbuckers controlled via a singular Strat-style volume knob and three-way blade switch.

Other features include a heel-mount truss rod adjustment wheel, Luminlay side dot fret markers, black hardware, and for the first time on a Jim Root signature, a Floyd Rose 1500 series double-locking tremolo.

“[With] every guitar I ever had, I was really proficient with a Floyd Rose,” Root tells Guitar World in a new interview. “And then for 10 or 15 years I never touched a Floyd Rose [so I] kind of [lost] a little bit of that.

“In some ways [it’s] kind of like riding a bike, and in other ways it’s like, ‘I forgot about fluttering, dive bombs and [all the] cool things you can do with a Floyd. It’s just one more thing to have, instead of hitting a pedal, you know.”

As the Slipknot guitarist explains, his new Pro-Mod San Dimas Style 1 marks the culmination of a near-lifelong infatuation with Charvel guitars, which began when he received one for Christmas one year as a teenager.

“I freaked out,” he recalls. “It was a Charvel Model One with the fulcrum tremolo, one humbucker and a hockey stick headstock. It was like a goal to reach, you know? I would always think to myself, one day I will have one of those Charvel guitars.”

On how his new Charvel signature model came about, Root tells Guitar World: “I have a really bad problem with buying guitars. For the past year, I’ve been buying a lot of Mexican Charvels, and they’re fucking great. So they offered me a signature model [and] I was like, ‘Okay, as long as I’m not getting kicked out of Fender I’m down.’”

Jim Root’s current lineup of Fender signature models includes a Stratocaster, Telecaster and two Jazzmasters – the latest of which, like the new Charvel, features his signature EMG Daemonum pickups.

“For almost 30 years, Slipknot’s attention-grabbing, aggressive style of music and energetic and chaotic live shows have influenced and honored heavy metal and its impact on music culture,” says Charvel’s VP of Category Management Jon Romanowski.

“Jim Root is an innovative and ferocious player – we could not be more excited to introduce his new Signature Pro-Mod San Dimas model, continuing our long-standing collaboration with an incredible talent who has dedicated most of his life to his career.”

The Jim Root Signature Pro-Mod San Dimas Style 1 HH FR is available now for $1,499. For more info, head to Charvel.

Dunlop has teamed up with Slipknot’s resident electric guitar hero Jim Root for two all-new sets of signature electric guitar strings.

Arriving in drop A and drop B configurations, each set was hand-curated by Root, who personally spec'd up two individual sets of six strings capable of keeping up with his relentless low-end playing.

Both the gauge and core size were chosen by Root, with the Slipknot guitarist also highlighting the need to maintain a high-end clarity, while ensuring tuning stability and physical robustness for his no-holds-barred playing style.

With that in mind, Root approached Dunlop in an effort to design some signature strings capable of meeting the above criteria, resulting in the Jim Root String Lab Series guitar string sets.

“These strings give me what I need to get my sound, and they’re comfortable to play no matter what I throw at them,” he said. “They keep their high-end clarity for a long time, and they’re really consistent from one pack to the next – they never break on me.”

The drop A set are .012 to 0.064, comprising .012, .016, .020, .038, .048 and 0.064 gauges. The drop B collection, meanwhile, contains slightly lighter strings: .011, .015, .020, .036, .042 and .056.

We imagine Root will be strapping his strings on to his ever-growing collection of signature guitars, which was recently bolstered with the arrival of his long-awaited Charvel model.

Both sets are available now for $19.79.

To find out more, head over to Dunlop.

We’ve seen a few signature strings hit the market this year. Last month, Doyle Wolfgang Von Frankenstein launched his own Monster Gear company, which offered a trio of Von Frankenstein signature sets.

Charvel has expanded its Artist Signature Series for 2022, introducing new signature guitars for Slipknot's Jim Root, James LaBrie collaborator/Icefish lead man Marco Sfogli, and Anthrax bassist Frank Bello.

The long-teased Strat-style Jim Root Signature Pro-Mod San Dimas Style 1 HH FR arrives alongside Root's existing Fender signature models – a Stratocaster, Telecaster and two Jazzmasters – while the drop marks both Sfogli and Bello's first Charvel signature models.

There's plenty of specs to digest, so let's dive in below.

Charvel Jim Root Signature Pro-Mod San Dimas Style 1 HH FR

First up, Jim Root's new signature guitar is based on Charvel's Pro-Mod San Dimas Style 1 blueprint, and features a mahogany body – contoured and with a scalloped lower back bout comfortable upper-fret access – and a bolt-on maple neck with graphite reinforcement designed to withstand “extreme climate changes”. Perfect for a guitarist who routinely stands close to pyrotechnics onstage.

The guitar also sports a 12"-16" compound-radius fingerboard with rolled edges and 22 jumbo frets, as well as a heel-mount truss rod adjustment wheel for “pain-free neck relief tweaks on the fly”. Elsewhere, Luminlay side dots provide fingerboard guidance in low-light settings.

In terms of electronics, the guitar is loaded with a pair of Root's signature EMG Daemonum humbuckers – which aim to combine the power of active pickups with the sensitive touch of passives – with a streamlined control layout consisting of a three-way blade switch and a singular skirted Strat-style volume knob.

Other features include a Floyd Rose 1500 Series double-locking tremolo, Charvel-designed locking tuners and black hardware.

Two aesthetics are available: one finished in Satin Black with a maple fingerboard and one in Satin White with an ebony fingerboard. Both come with a Charvel multi-fit hardshell gig bag.

The Jim Root Signature Pro-Mod San Dimas Style 1 HH FR is priced at $1,499.

Charvel Marco Sfogli Signature Pro-Mod So-Cal Style 1 HSS FR CM QM

Icefish guitarist and James LaBrie's six-string sidekick gets a new signature in the form of a stylishly appointed Pro-Mod So-Cal Style 1 model.

It features a resonant alder body with a rippling quilted maple top, with a scalloped lower back bout and sculpted shredder's cut heel for “comfortable and unencumbered upper-fret access”. It also sports a bolt-on caramelized maple neck and fingerboard with, like Jim Root's new signature, graphite reinforcement.

In terms of electronics, the model is fitted with a versatile pickup configuration, with a EMG 89 active humbucker in the bridge position and a pair of EMG SA single coils in the middle and neck positions, the latter offering Strat-style tones, too.

The pickup layout, Charvel explains, reflects Sfogli's “propensity to cut across genres ranging from progressive metal to jazz”.

Controls include a five-way blade pickup selector switch, and single skirted Strat-style volume and tone knobs with push/pull functionality for coil splitting the bridge pickup.

Other features include rolled fingerboard edges, 22 jumbo frets, Luminlay side dots, a heel-mount truss rod adjustment wheel, Floyd Rose 1000 Series double-locking tremolo bridge, black pickguard and chrome hardware.

Available in a Transparent Purple Burst finish, the Marco Sfogli Signature Pro-Mod So-Cal Style 1 HSS FR CM QM is priced at $1,599.

Charvel Frank Bello Signature Pro-Mod So-Cal Bass PJ IV

And last but by no means last, Anthrax bass player Frank Bello has expanded his signature arsenal with a Pro-Mod So-Cal Bass PJ IV model.

Featuring a poplar body paired with a bolt-on maple neck – with graphite reinforcement for withstanding “extreme climate changes” – the Frank Bello Signature Pro-Mod So-Cal Bass PJ IV is “primed to thrash”.

Engineered for “unrivaled playability”, the bass also sports a 12"-16" compound-radius fingerboard with rolled edges, 20 jumbo frets and black block inlays.

It's also loaded with a set of Bello's signature EMG P/J pickups – which serve “warmth and low-end punch, along with tight mids and dynamic high end”. These are controlled by singular volume knobs for each pickup.

Other features include a Charvel HiMass bridge, Graph Tech TUSQ XL nut, open-gear tuners, a Gloss Black finish, mirror pickguard and chrome hardware.

The Frank Bello Signature Pro-Mod So-Cal Bass PJ IV is available for $1,299.

For more information on any of the new Artist Signature Series models, head to Charvel.

The Telecaster used to be quite an underrated guitar, but it seems like over the past few years, the wider guitar community has finally seen it for what it is, probably the most versatile guitar you can buy right now. Adding one of the best Telecasters to your arsenal is a move that will allow you to play pretty much any style, whether it’s country, blues, rock, punk, grunge, or even metal.

The reason the Telecaster is so versatile is because of its combination of pickups. On the one hand, you have an incredibly bright bridge single coil, which is partially due to it being attached to a metal plate. At the other end, you have a much darker neck single coil, which is in large part down to the chrome plate that covers it. Because of these two opposite ends of the spectrum, you can combine different configurations, leading to a vast array of tonal options. Add in a super stable hard tail bridge, and you’ve got an electric guitar that’s great for gigging and recording, too.

If you’re after the best Telecaster overall, I think it’s the Fender Player II Telecaster. It’s fantastic value for money, bridges the gap nicely between classic tones and modern playability, and is available in a huge array of colorways. If you need something cheaper, have a look at the Squier Affinity Telecaster, which is amazing value for money around the $330 mark.

If you’re buying your first Telecaster, be sure to check out my how to choose section. I’ve also answered loads of common questions around this uber-popular guitar in our FAQs section, and outlined any key terms you’ll need to know in a glossary of key terms.

Best overall

Overview

Fender’s Player Series sums up everything that makes Fender guitars so popular. Now in its second iteration, the Player II series has simplicity and quality at the heart, and the Player II Telecaster doesn’t disappoint.

Build quality

The gloss-finished alder body and bolt-on maple neck make for a classic combination, delivering plenty of that iconic Tele ‘twang.’ However, this refreshed series now offers more choices, including chambered ash and chambered mahogany bodies, available in an array of stunning new finishes such as Mocha and Aquatone Blue.

Playability

Perhaps controversially so, the Player II Series has 22 frets rather than the traditional 21 - but the Player II Telecaster isn’t built to stick to the rules. It’s here for people who want an all-new experience on a classic, simple, workhorse guitar.

The ‘Modern C’ neck profile is crafted for both performance and comfort, featuring a smooth satin finish that avoids the stickiness often associated with gloss lacquer. With the addition of rosewood fingerboards alongside maple in the Player II series, there’s now a style to suit every preference.

Sounds

The Player II series single-coils reaffirm that instantly recognizable tone, but are wound just that little bit hotter - keeping one foot firmly in the present day. That means you can get bags of that classic Tele spank for more vintage Tele tones, while it copes well with the higher gain demands of grunge and punk. The combination of bright bridge pickup and woolly neck tone makes it super versatile, allowing you to cover a range of light and dark tones.

Best budget

Overview

The Squier Affinity series is Fender’s answer to offering their unique designs and historic tones to the beginner electric guitar market. For those starting their journey in guitar, these instruments offer tremendous value for money, and though they can’t offer the full Fender experience, costing around a fifth of the cheapest American-made models, these guitars are virtually unbeatable within the sub-$350 end of the market.

Build quality

The Telecaster’s longevity can largely be attributed to its no-nonsense, straightforward build. It’s familiar, comfortable to play, and deceptively versatile, qualities that shine in the Affinity Series Telecaster. Its simple build means that there’s not much to go wrong here, and the Affinity model is very well put together indeed.

Playability

The satin 'C'-shaped neck offers exceptional comfort, and while it doesn’t feel quite as nice as some of the more expensive Teles with rolled fingerboard edges, it’s not a bad playing guitar either. The 9.5” radius offers a nice in-between point of traditional versus modern, and the Laurel fingerboard feels smooth and well finished.

Sounds

The ceramic single coil pickups lack the nuance of an Alnico variant, but they still do a pretty good job. There’s a bit of sharp high end here in the bridge position, which can be neutralized with careful EQ, but it’s only really noticeable when played clean.

Once you get into overdriven tones, this gets smoothed out, resulting in a very usable tone. The neck pickup is dark as you’d expect, but again, it’s more than usable, particularly for beginners who won’t have developed an ear to determine the nuances between different pickup material types.

Best Telecaster with humbuckers

Overview

After an increase in higher-gain players over the course of the 1960s, Fender hired former Gibson pickup guru Seth Love to help update their debut solid-body electric design. The fruits of the collaboration arrived in 1972 as the Telecaster Deluxe, the perfect Telecaster for those who can’t do without humbucker tones. The Fender American Vintage II 1975 Telecaster Deluxe features a pair of those wide-range humbuckers that are perfect for those who want a harder edge on their Tele.

Build quality

I really enjoyed the fact that it has a belly cut, which makes it a lot more comfortable when you’re playing standing up. Solid stainless steel saddles stand out from the more typical vintage-inspired brass ones you’d expect to see, while at the other end, a set of Schaller tuners handles those duties. It’s also got a double string tree where you’d normally expect to see just a single one.

Playability

70s-specific features include a slimmer-than-usual ‘C’ neck profile, making this a seriously comfortable instrument. It took me a little by surprise during my testing, but it was ultra comfortable thanks to an excellent out-of-the-box setup. A 9.5” radius works really well with the medium jumbo frets, feeling slightly more modern than the more vintage spec Teles in this article.

Sounds

Now, although the humbuckers were designed to help Fender compete with Gibson, they don’t quite deliver Les Paul tones. I found the Deluxe to deliver a more gritty, darker texture than that of a regular Tele bridge pickup, with excellent sustain and a really nice, controllable feedback at higher gain levels.

Balancing tones between the pickups and their individual tone controls gives you lots of options for experimentation, and they sound great clean, too. There’s plenty of nice clean clank here, but if you need it you’ve got more in the tank if you need it.

Best modern Telecaster

Overview

Initially launched in 2022, Fender's flagship American series, the Ultra, has evolved, and the Fender American Ultra II Telecaster represents the more forward-thinking arm of the company’s offering.

Build quality

Designed with the modern player in mind, this updated series features compound-radius fretboards, tapered heels, sculpted bodies, revoiced Ultra II noiseless pickups, locking tuners, and a selection of stunning new finishes, with Avalanche and Sinister Red being particularly mind-blowing. Completing the premium aesthetic, the Fender logo is rendered in elegant gold foil on the headstock.

Playability

The American Ultra II Tele wears these updates well. It has a compound 10”-14” radius that feels right, especially atop the new Modern D profile neck. It’s a profile that plays quickly but fills the palm in all the right ways, with its satin finish a super-smooth enabler for swift position shifts. The Luminlay side dots are also a nice touch, guiding you to safety amidst dark and dingy venues.

Sounds

For all the modern accouterments, the American Ultra II Tele is still a textbook Tele, with raunchy twang and more than a little snarl when you turn the gain up. The S-1 switch allied to the 3-way pickup position switching makes it sound a little like the greatest hits of Tele tone. That in itself is enough of a recommendation.

Watch our Fender American Ultra II Telecaster demo

Best vintage Telecaster

Overview

Designed to replicate the exact year of manufacture, Fender’s Vintera II ‘50s Nocaster is in my mind, the perfect vintage Tele. When the Tele as we know it today initially launched, it was called the Broadcaster. Unfortunately, Gretsch also had a drum kit named the Broadkaster, and as you can imagine, disputes ensued. Those models manufactured between the Broadcaster and 1951 when it became known as the Telecaster are often dubbed ‘Nocasters’ as they only bore the Fender logo on their headstock.

Build quality

History lesson aside, this guitar is vintage Tele through and through. It’s a barebones Tele very much in the vein of the original, with the classic plate-mounted bridge pickup and chrome-covered neck single coil alongside a three-saddle vintage-style bridge with brass saddles.

Playability

‘Vintage-tall’ frets that are narrow paired with a 7.25” radius and a chunky ‘U’ profile neck give the Nocaster a decidedly old school neck feel, one that could prove divisive for those used to more modern specs. It’s heaven if you love vintage guitars though, and coupled with a low action, we found barre chords came easily, as well as fast blues scale runs. It may seem initially hefty, but you get used to it quickly.

Sounds

In terms of tones, I found the bridge pickup to be beefier than you might expect, which gives you that famous twang when you dig in. It always manages to stay just shy of harsh, though, offering a cutting tone that’s adaptable to many styles. The bridge pickup is lovely and warm, and I found it to be really musical. Put both pickups on at the same time and play with the tone knob for a massive array of sounds. It’s a simple guitar, but you can coax so many great sounds out of it.

Best Telecaster for metal

Overview

As the guitarist in one of the most successful metal bands the world has seen, Slipknot guitarist Jim Root (aka #4) knows a thing or two about high-gain tones. If you want that classic Tele look but are after a guitar better built for heavy tones, then this signature model is a great shout.

Build quality

Jim’s signature Telecaster features some less-usual appointments, including an ebony fingerboard, locking tuners, black hardware, no tone control, a Hardtail strings-thru-body bridge, and his favorite active EMG pickup set. IT even has a mahogany body which is very unusual. It’s a simple machine that’s well put together, great for gigging guitar players.

Playability

The neck profile is probably the least unusual thing about this guitar, featuring Fender’s popular modern ‘ C’ profile. It’s not the shredder's neck you’d expect from the Slipknot guitarist, but it’s still ultra-playable whether you’re chugging riffs or ripping leads.

Sound

Probably the most un-Tele like Tele on this list, with an active pickup set, you can expect high-powered tones with bags of sustain. It sounds big and warm, miles away from the twang typical Telecasters are famous for. If you want to chug, this guitar will absolutely indulge you. The bridge pickup is all power, but the neck is a little lower output, giving you some great options for cleaner tonalities.

The result of this collaboration with Fender is a high-powered workhorse that will be able to cut through the mix and have no problem voicing the kind of lower tunings bands like Slipknot were responsible for popularizing. It’s not a classic Telecaster by any means, but it is one of the best metal guitars available right now.

Also consider

So those are our top picks, but there are many more great options to choose from that offer something a little different in terms of features and performance. We've selected some more of our favorites below.

How to choose

When you’re on the hunt for your perfect Telecaster, there are a few key things to keep in mind.

1. Tonewoods

First up, tonewoods matter. The Telecaster typically features ash or alder, which balances weight and sound. Ash gives you a slightly brighter tone, while alder offers a well-rounded frequency response – perfect for that classic Tele twang, but there are a number of different woods used, such as mahogany, and if you're George Harrison, then solid rosewood!

2. Pickups

Now, let’s talk pickups, which, of course, are crucial for shaping your sound. Most Teles come with single-coil pickups that deliver a bright and clear sound, often with that signature chime and clarity. If you want a beefier tone, you might want to check out models with humbuckers or those that mix both. This way, you can explore a broader range of sounds.

3. Hardware

Don’t forget about hardware; better quality tuners and sturdy components can seriously enhance tuning stability and sustain. And when it comes to neck profiles, it’s all about personal preference. Some players love thin necks for speed, while others prefer a thicker feel that's great for blues and rock.

Above all, trust your instincts. Sometimes, the right Telecaster just feels right when you pick it up. Use this guide to navigate your options, but keep an open mind. You might just stumble upon your dream Telecaster sooner than you think.

FAQs

Key terms

• Ash: A popular tonewood known for its bright tone and resonant qualities. It’s lightweight but strong, giving a nice balance to your sound.
• Alder: Another common wood for Telecasters, offering a warm, well-rounded tone. It’s a go-to for that classic Tele sound.
• Binding: The decorative strip that goes around the body of the guitar. It can add some flair and also protect the edges.
• Bridge: The part of the guitar where the strings attach to the body. It plays a big role in tuning stability and tonal character.
• Frets: The metal strips on the neck that help you change the pitch by pressing down the strings. More frets usually mean more notes to play!
• Humbucker: A type of pickup that uses two coils to cancel out noise, giving you a thicker, warmer sound compared to single-coils.
• Neck: The long part of the guitar where you play notes. Different neck shapes and woods can affect your playing comfort and style.
• Pickup: The device that captures the vibrations of the strings and converts them to an electrical signal. Different pickups can drastically change your sound.
• Rosewood: A popular wood used for fretboards, known for its smooth feel and warm tone. It can add a bit of richness to your sound.
• Saddles: The small pieces on the bridge that hold the strings in place. They can influence sustain and tone, as well as how easily you can adjust the action.
• Single-coil: A type of pickup known for its bright and clear sound. These are classic for Telecasters and are part of what gives them that signature twang.
• Squier: A more affordable brand under the Fender umbrella, offering budget-friendly versions of classic Fender models like the Telecaster, great for beginners.
• Tonewood: The type of wood used in the body, neck, and fretboard, which affects the guitar’s sound and overall vibe.
• Tuners: The tuners, or machine heads, that hold the strings in place and allow you to tune your guitar. Better tuners mean better tuning stability.

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How we test

Here at Guitar World, we are experts in our field, with many years of playing and product testing between us. We live and breathe everything guitar-related, and we draw on this knowledge and experience of using products in live, recording and rehearsal scenarios when selecting the products for our guides.

When choosing what we believe to be the best Telecasters available right now, we combine our hands-on experience, user reviews and testimonies and engage in lengthy discussions with our editorial colleagues to reach a consensus about the top products in any given category.

First and foremost, we are guitarists, and we want other players to find the right product for them. So we take into careful consideration everything from budget to feature set, ease of use and durability to come up with a list of what we can safely say are the best Telecasters on the market right now.

Read more about our rating system, how we choose the gear we feature, and exactly how we test each product.

It’s no secret that John Mayer is spearheading the charge to bring the electric guitar into the modern era. In a strategic play that started with his move to PRS to create his “elevated” Silver Sky signature guitar, Mayer has continuously voiced his desire to change guitar norms, and has championed an approach to function and aesthetics that aims to tap into a new era of guitar design.

Mayer reiterated his position during a recent conversation on Cory Wong's Wong Notes podcast, and confirmed his desire to “bring the guitar into the same context as everything around it” while simultaneously observing that those who share his opinion are few and far between.

He does, however, name one individual who is also at the cutting-edge of guitar design: Slipknot’s Jim Root, whose signature Fender Telecaster is, according to Mayer, everything a modern-era Tele should be.

“You know who else’s feels great?” Mayer asks Wong while discussing modern guitars. “Jim Root from Slipknot. I mean, that’s cool of Fender. They’re actually letting artists go, ‘Here’s what you should do.’

“The Jim Root Tele looks like every Tele should look in this day and age,” he claimed. “It’s smart. It’s awake. It’s doing something completely new. It’s got big EMGs in it and it looks spacey but still really disciplined.”

No doubt Mayer is fond of the entire Jim Root line of signatures, comprising equally streamlined Stratocaster and Jazzmaster models, all of which are designed with a similar no-frills-needed approach to functionality in mind.

As for his penchant for ultra-modern design and aesthetics, and the importance of likening the guitar to consumer products of today, Mayer mused, “The reason I think the Silver Sky feels great is because, if you go to find one, there are two neck options for wood and six color options. That’s it.

“It’s very disciplined,” he added. “Which is why when something new happens with it, it’s exciting. Even though obviously in there is a great guitar, it feels modern. It feels like the rest of the stuff in this world does.

“People all the time go, ‘Can you make it with humbuckers?’ I go, like, ‘Keep it clean.’ It feels really good to tell a clean story.”

His campaign has not been in vain, though, with Mayer concluding his commentary on guitar design by saying, “I am seeing a change, which is exciting. I'm seeing photoshoots for guitars get better. 

“We're getting there. I think it's really cool. Because my guitar doesn't feel like a T-Bird; it feels like a Tesla, even though it's pink.“

Elsewhere in the podcast, Mayer revealed that he owns the Dumbleland Special guitar amp that Stevie Ray Vaughan had used to record the entire Texas Flood album in Jackson Browne's studio.

In an earlier section of the show, he also teased that he has a secret stash of uniquely finished Silver Skys that would make people “flip out“.

Slipknot have unleashed their first new music in over two years, a brutally heavy track named The Chapeltown Rag. 

Following 2019's We Are Not Your Kind, the new track is described by frontman Corey Taylor as “a punisher," “frenetic” and “classic Slipknot," and sees the Iowa nine-piece stylistically revisit the chaotic arrangements of their first two albums, Slipknot (1999) and Iowa (2001).

Kicking off with an Eyeless-style breakbeat from resident turntablist and onstage hypeman Sid Wilson, the track quickly descends into madness, with guitarists Jim Root and Mick Thomson offering up their usual brand of chugging drop B riff work underneath Corey Taylor's savage vocals, which sound stronger than ever. Check out the track's official visualizer below.

The track is said to have been written after Corey Taylor watched a Netflix documentary on the Yorkshire Ripper, a serial killer who murdered multiple women in the area of Chapeltown in Leeds, England in the late '70s.

Lyrically, the track is inspired by the moral failings revealed by the film – the case was botched by investigators who became wrongly convinced that the killer was only targeting prostitutes – which are echoed in the current age of the internet and social media.

“It’s coming from a point of talking about the various manipulations that can happen when social media meets media itself,” Taylor explains. “And the different ways that these manipulations can try to pull us in different directions, in the fact that we’re all becoming addicts to it, which is very, very dangerous.”

“The Chapeltown Rag facilitates a sort of mindset that you’re going to like: it’s along the barnburner side of things,” adds percussionist, backing vocalist and Slipknot co-founder Shawn “Clown” Crahan.

Taylor also says that the dynamic in the Slipknot camp is healthy, adding that they're “all getting along so well," and that it “feels like it did when we first started touring."

“When we first started touring, we were really tight and we all did everything together,” he says. “Then obviously, as time went on, our personalities got bigger and our addictions got bigger. We all pulled apart in a lot of different ways and it was hard to get back to that. But now, it almost feels like it’s come full circle.”

Slipknot began teasing the new song earlier this week, when, via social media, they encouraged fans to visit a mysterious website named The Chapeltown Rag. The site hosted nine NFTs for sale, which when fans would hover over with their mouse would play what we now know are audio snippets from The Chapeltown Rag.

The band are scheduled to give the track its live debut during their set at Knotfest Los Angeles at the Banc of California Stadium later today (November 5). The show will be livestreamed from 6PM PT, and tickets are available at $20 apiece over at Veeps.

Slipknot's new album – which is yet to receive an official title or release date – will be their last with longtime label Roadrunner Records. It will follow the tragic death of the band's first drummer Joey Jordison, who appeared on their first four albums: Slipknot (1999), Iowa (2001), Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses) (2004) and All Hope is Gone (2008).

Jim Root has confirmed he is working with Charvel on a new signature guitar.

The guitarist shared the news on Instagram, posting multiple close-up pictures of the typically Root-esque stripped-back San Dimas – as well as one with Slipknot production coordinator Simon Robinson, who by their exchanges looks to have helped design the guitar – adding that the model is “coming soon”.

While the post's caption gives little away, Root dives into detail on the instrument's spec sheet in the comments section.

Complementing the guitar's black or white-finished mahogany body is a standard maple neck and compound-radius fingerboard. When asked why he didn't opt for roasted maple as a neck material, the guitarist replies: “I wanted standard maple so it would get all gross and worn in eventually”.

In terms of fingerboard material, maple is a notable change from Root's other signature models, like his Fender Jazzmaster V4. He explains: “I had good luck with [maple fingerboards] in the studio and that resurrected my fondness of them.”

The new Charvel also sports a Floyd Rose tremolo system, another departure from his usual hardtail bridge configuration.

“All the guitars I ‘grew up’ playing had Floyds,” the guitarist explains. “I moved away from them for Slipknot, [as it] just wasn't practical at the time. But I kinda missed it. So, back to it on some guitars.”

Electronics come by way of a pair of EMG Jim Root Signature Daemonum humbuckers – like those fitted in Root's Jazzmaster V4 – controlled, in classic Jim Root fashion, via a singular volume knob and, presumably, a three-way selector switch.

Several of the model's specs deviate from those of his Fenders, though Root remains loyal to his Jazzmasters.

In response to a comment calling the new Charvel “sick”, but saying it's “barely not good enough to beat” his Jazzmaster V4”, Root responds: “Jazzmasters are a special breed. [They're] different animals.”

In terms of allegiance, Root remains a Fender signature artist, as Charvel is owned by Fender.

Talking availability, Root says the guitar “will be available to the public sometime in 2022”, though he adds he's “not sure exactly when”. Price-wise, he says he and Charvel are “trying to keep it under $1,500”.

Jim Root unveiled two new guitars – a one-of-a-kind Black Paisley version of his Jazzmaster V4 and a custom Fender Meteora – during Slipknot's recent shows at Rocklahoma, Inkcarceration and Riot Fest.

Jim Root is known for his brutally minimalist electric guitars – case in point, his sleek all-white, single-volume Fender Jazzmaster V4. But during Slipknot's recent post-pandemic festival shows at Rocklahoma, Inkcarceration and Riot Fest, the guitarist donned a markedly more eye-catching six-string.

In fan-shot footage of the shows, Root can be seen picking up a luxurious Black Paisley-finished iteration of his Jazzmaster V4 signature model, before launching into classic Slipknot cut Wait and Bleed.

After tearing through the track – and subsequently Vol. 3: The Subliminal Verses number Vermillion – Slipknot's #4 re-racks the guitar, before equipping a brand-new – and more Root-esque, streamlined – custom Fender Meteora for Eyeless.

While the freshly finished Jazzmaster – built by Fender Master Builder Kyle McMillin, who confirmed it to be one-of-a-kind – is a recent addition to Jim Root's notably sprawling guitar collection, it isn't his first Fender electric to don a Black Paisley finish.

Earlier this year, the Slipknot man revealed a new Strat and Tele sporting the finish, also built by McMillin.

Other than its Black Paisley finish, the fresh Jazzmaster looks identical in spec to Root's Jazzmaster V4, with features including a hardtail bridge, single volume control and EMG Daemonum humbucking pickups.

If you didn't manage to catch Slipknot at Rocklahoma, Inkcarceration or Riot Fest and you're keen to get a look at Jim Root's new Black Paisley Jazzmaster or custom Meteora, fear not, as both guitars look to be staples of the Iowa guitar-slinger's live arsenal going forward.

Slipknot's Knotfest Roadshow US tour continues this Saturday (September 25) at Knotfest Iowa, and will run until November 2, when the band will rain hell on the Ak-Chin Pavilion in Phoenix, Arizona.

For more information, or to buy tickets, head to Slipknot's website.

What made you gravitate towards Telecasters? 

“Growing up in the 80s I was really enamored by the imagery of Fender style guitars. On the cover of Long After Dark, Tom Petty is holding a Tele, and it’s just such an iconic image to me. In the early days of Slipknot, everything was like ‘molten metal god’ and big pointy guitars – BC Rich Warlocks and Ironbirds. I wanted to do the absolute opposite. 

“Maybe it’s a bit of an indignant punk-rock attitude, like, ‘Screw you and your metal guitars – I’m going to play this Tele!’ If you stick with the classics they’re never going to go out of style. You can make them your own and they’re always going to have a level of validity, whether it’s a pair of Ray-Bans or a Tele.“  

Tell us about your signature Telecaster. 

“The reason I chose mahogany was when we were recording, the mahogany guitars were sitting in the mixes a lot better than the alder ones. The alder ones seemed brighter and snappier. You’d think that would cut through all the instruments on a Slipknot record, but for some reason the mahogany guitars just sat better. My apologies to all the Tele purists, but I don’t play in a country band so it’s not like I can use single coil pickups and have it cut through.“

Some people think EMG pickups sound the same regardless of the guitar. What do you say to that? 

“I’ve been in a studio with 20 of my guitars all loaded with EMGs and they all sound drastically different. Shooting out my signature pickups in the studio, I could actually look at the waveform from the pickups in whatever guitar. Not only did they sound drastically different in each guitar but you could also see the thickness of the wave file, how much output and what frequencies they were hitting.“

Do you ever use a traditional single-coil Telecaster? 

“I have a couple. They’re great for clean tones and layering. There’s not a lot of clean tones in Slipknot but we do a lot of layering. I’ve been writing more experimental, cleaner stuff at home and those guitars come in very handy for that.“

Your Teles must have survived some battles, too.

“We were shooting a video for Disasterpiece, and for some reason I was mad at [drummer] Joey Jordison and heaved my Tele at him like a spear. I threw it probably twenty feet. I thought for sure that I broke the hell out of it, but the only thing wrong was an imprint of his drum riser at the very end of the headstock. My tech just retuned it and I finished the show with the same guitar.“

With the sheer level of energy present at Slipknot's live shows, it's no surprise the band have, on occasion, taken the stage antics to the extremes. Hell, DJ Sid Wilson launching himself off drum risers has become a regular part of the band's routine.

And now, to add to the catalog of the Iowa troupe's WTF stage moments, guitarist Jim Root has recalled the time he threw a Fender Telecaster at ex-drummer Joey Jordison like a spear.

In a new interview with Total Guitar, Root explains: “We were shooting a video for Disasterpiece, and for some reason I was mad at Joey Jordison and heaved my Tele at him like a spear. I threw it probably 20 feet. 

“I thought for sure that I broke the hell out of it, but the only thing wrong was an imprint of his drum riser at the very end of the headstock. My tech just retuned it and I finished the show with the same guitar.”

Of course, Teles have long been known for their hardiness, but if they can survive a hurl from a Slipknot axe-slinger, we'd wager there's not much they can't withstand.

Root also explains how a punk-rock mindset led him to adopt a Tele in Slipknot.

“Growing up in the '80s I was really enamored by the imagery of Fender-style guitars. On the cover of Long After Dark, Tom Petty is holding a Tele, and it’s just such an iconic image to me. 

“In the early days of Slipknot, everything was like ‘molten metal god’ and big pointy guitars – BC Rich Warlocks and Ironbirds. I wanted to do the absolute opposite. Maybe it’s a bit of an indignant punk-rock attitude, like, ‘Screw you and your metal guitars – I’m going to play this Tele!’”

Total Guitar's April 2021 issue dives deep into the world of the Fender Telecaster, and features all-new interviews with the likes of Johnny Marr, Francis Rossi, and Jason Isbell, to name a few.

To pick up a copy, head to Magazines Direct.

Dimebag Darrell's legacy is irreversibly etched onto the guitar world. His tone is unmistakable, and his influence without question. Even now, just over 16 years after his death, Dean Guitars continues to pay homage to the Pantera legend with fresh Dime-branded electric guitar models.

But how many people can say they've received a piece of gear from the guitar icon himself? 

Jim Root – who's currently in the midst of a gear-themed Instagram spree – has revealed that he is one the few who can, sharing a photo of a Jim Dunlop Cry Baby From Hell wah pedal Darrell once gifted him on tour – complete with a box bearing a personalized message from Dime himself.

“Dime gave me this Dunlop Cry Baby from hell and he had written a note to me on it,” the Slipknot guitarist explained in the post's caption. Dimebag's note can be viewed on the second photo.

“To ME? From one of if not the most influential guitarists of all time. His flow and style were and are undeniable. One of those dudes that inspired you to be better. Not just at guitar playing. But being cool... being happy... being present. I was and still am blown away by it.”

Root continues, “I didn’t know Dime well. I’d only met him a handful of times. But that he would think to gift me something like this... The note more so than the wah. I mean what can I say. A rare and missed human. 

“He’d probably want me to bust that thing out and beat the shit out of it. I can’t bring myself to. So here’s a little something personal from me to you. Thanks man. I wish I could return the favor.”

Among other highlights of Root's gear collection is a yet-unopened Gibson Custom shop guitar he's owned for 10 years.

Jim Root is known for his affiliation with Fender, but judging by his latest string of Instagram posts, his electric guitar collection reaches far beyond the big F.

On January 13, the Slipknot guitarist kicked off his Insta spree with a photo of his guitar room with the caption, “Did a bit of a clean up in the guitar room. Going to post some pics of guitars I opened up when I did it.

“Eventually I’ll put some of these along with some pedals and amps up for sale (need to clear up some space) if I do so it will be through Reverb and I’ll announce when when that time comes.”

He followed up with a shot of a white Explorer-style Jackson Kelly, before posting several Jacksons, ESPs, a battered Tomahawk Strat and a Gibson LP Junior in TV Yellow over subsequent days.

But perhaps the most intriguing item in his treasure trove of six-strings is the mysterious, 10-year-old, unopened Gibson Custom Shop box that appears in his latest post.

Captioning the post, Root wrote: “10 years. Let’s get this one out of the way. 1. I didn’t realize the serial number was 000004. 2. Ship date May 2010. So. 10 year anniversary... seems like a good reason to open it, right? Oh. Wait. It’s ‘21. ‘20 just shouldn’t fucking count. So yeah. I stand by it. 10. Nah. I don’t think I will. I like this game. 

“I like the mystery of that guitar... Hidden away in its original packing. Could be the best guitar I ever played. Could sound the best. Could have that 'thing'. Could not. Could just be another Firebird that happens to be Silverburst. Maybe I’ll never know.”

This isn’t the first time Jim Root has shown the mysterious box on camera. Back in 2014, in a FRET12 The Sound & The Story DVD, he revealed that it does in fact house a Silverburst Firebird V.

Keeping it in the box all these years appears to have been Root's plan all along, it seems. Speaking in the DVD, he said, “It's been this long – if I keep it in the box for, say, 10 years, who in the world has found a brand-new vintage Gibson still in the box? I know that's getting a little bit comic book nerd on it, but…”

Will Root ever open that box? You'll have to wait and… read, as we'll let you know as soon as we get a first glimpse at its contents.

There is no gray area when it comes to Slipknot guitarist Jim Root’s vision for his signature models from Fender. It’s literally black and white. 

Sure, only black and white finishes for the electric guitars in one respect, but more importantly, there's equally no gray area in each instrument's concept. If anything, his signature instruments clearly sport the bare minimum to get the job done, and Root undoubtedly loves using Fender’s iconic shapes without any of the bells and whistles associated with their original formulas. 

His latest signature model, the Fender Jim Root Jazzmaster V4, shows off a more elevated look with block inlays and open-coil pickups, but still remains as stripped down as his other guitars and is designed to deliver in-your-face tone with brute force. 

Features

With classic offset contours, a dense body shape and a spartan control layout, the Fender Jim Root Jazzmaster V4 seriously makes you appreciate how capable this artist model is for metal. 

Uncomplicated and unpretentious, the guitar features a mahogany slab body, contoured neck heel, maple neck with a slim “C”-shaped profile, a bound ebony fingerboard with a 12–inch radius, 22 jumbo frets and block position inlays, EMG Jim Root Signature Daemonum open-coil active humbucking pickups, single volume control knob and three-way pickup switch, hard-tail string-through-body bridge, and Fender locking tuners. 

Performance

The Jim Root Jazzmaster V4 looks even more stark arriving in a matte satin finish in polar white, but it is a well-balanced guitar with sleek belly and forearm contours that accommodate a comfortable playing experience. 

There’s also nothing fiddly about it; the volume knob is right where you need it to be for exacting output control, and the selector switch is placed where you won’t knock into it if you thrash around. 

Fender’s carved neck heel smoothly cups the palm of your hand when you find yourself shredding past the 14th fret, and I’m amused by the large luminlay fluorescent side dots that really emphasize where you are on the neck if it ever seems unclear (a request from Root for navigating the neck when walking onto blacked-out stages).

There’s no mistaking the Jim Root Jazzmaster V4 as a guitar made to precisely execute drop tunings and all forms of metal guitar brutality. I had the guitar in standard and Drop B tunings, and it’s abundantly clear the active EMG Daemonum pickups complement the guitar’s aggressive leanings with percussive clarity and raw power.

The bridge and neck pickups exhibit full-bodied tone with a crisp and throaty midrange that excels with high-gain distortion and down-tunings with heavier string gauges. It’s an unbridled growl that remains taut for muscular riffing, and that’s exactly what I’d expect from this no-nonsense Jazzmaster.

Specs

• PRICE: $1,399.99, £1,139
• ORIGIN: Mexico
• TYPE: Offset solid-body electric
• BODY: Mahogany
• NECK: Maple, "thin C" profile, bolt-on
• SCALE LENGTH: 25.5" (648 mm)
• NUT/WIDTH: Synthetic bone, 1.685" (42.8 mm)
• FINGERBOARD: Bound ebony, pearloid block inlays, 305mm (12”) radius
• FRETS: 22, jumbo
• HARDWARE: 6-Saddle String-Through-Body Hardtail with Block Saddles, locking tuners, black
• ELECTRICS: EMG Jim Root Signature Daemonum Open-Coil Active Humbucking, 3-way toggle pickup selector switch, master volume
• LEFT-HANDERS: No
• FINISHES: Polar White (as reviewed) 
• CONTACT: Fender

Jim Root recently unveiled his fourth electric guitar collaboration with Fender, the brutally minimalist Jazzmaster V4. But don’t expect to see the Slipknot guitarist noodling away endlessly on it.

As Root recently explained, he’s more of a song and riff man, admitting he finds solos “stressful.”

“I love to do them,” Root told Guitar.com. “They’re a lot of fun and, of course, you want to showcase your skills. But if the song doesn’t need a guitar solo, why put one in there?"

Root continued, “I always find myself overthinking solos to the point where they don’t feel natural. I want to showcase my skills but I also want to play for the song. It makes me fucking crazy!”

This is perhaps an unusual take for a guitarist playing heavy metal, where the solo traditionally holds pride of place. But Root’s preferences when it comes to the guitar itself – he favors classic Tele, Strat and Jazzmaster designs – is somewhat atypical.

Which is what he likes about working with Fender. As he explained about his first pairing with the company, which resulted in a signature Tele model, “I thought it was cool because no one expects somebody to play music like Slipknot’s on a Telecaster – something you’d see Tom Petty with. I thought that was a nice cool juxtaposition.

“At the time, I was like, ‘Well, I’m gonna go against this.’ It’s sort of my anti-metal punk-rock mentality.”

As for future signature models he’d like to explore with Fender?

“I’d love to do a Meteora,” Root mused. “They’re really cool. But I feel like I’ve asked [Fender] for a lot already. I might be pushing my luck! 

"Maybe we could even do a Coronado? I’d like to try it with one of those – it might make me approach guitar playing a little differently.”

Fender announced the Jim Root Jazzmaster V4 back at winter NAMM, and now the company has officially released the latest iteration of the Slipknot electric guitar player's signature model.

New features on the V4 include EMG Jim Root Signature Daemonum open-coil active humbuckers, a hardtail bridge, single-knob volume control, a three-way switch and white neck binding with white pearloid block inlays design to reflect in dark light.

Otherwise, the sleek, minimalist design - there's no vibrato, rhythm circuit or tone control - sports a Polar White-finished mahogany slab body with contoured neck heel, C-shaped maple neck and 12-inch radius ebony fingerboard with 22 jumbo frets.

“The Jazzmaster V4 is kind of like an evolution,” says Root. “It is so well balanced and feels so good to play on stage. It is all I want to play right now.

"It’s all about attitude - taking [a guitar] and making it your own. So much attitude can come from a vibe or a feeling or a notion – that vibe with this instrument is what got me to love guitars.”

The Jim Root Jazzmaster V4 is available for $1,399.99.

For more information, head to Fender.

NAMM 2020: Fender has announced its artist signature electric guitar models for this year’s show: the Tom Morello Soul Power Stratocaster, Jim Root Jazzmaster V4 and Eric Johnson ‘Virginia’ Stratocaster.

That means we’ll most likely be waiting til Summer NAMM for the company’s influx of artist signatures for female players, but this is a pretty tasty trio to tide us over...

Tom Morello Soul Power Stratocaster - $1,399

As teased last week, Tom Morello has partnered with Fender to launch a production-line version of his primary guitar during his time with Chris Cornell-fronted supergroup Audioslave.

Based on Morello’s modified Designer/Aerodyne Series Strat, the Soul Power features a bound alder slab body with Deep C-shape maple neck and 9.5-14” compound radius rosewood fretboard.

Morello’s signature features appear in the Floyd Rose locking tremolo (which was an Ibanez Edge on the original), Seymour Duncan Hot Rails stacked bridge humbucker, two Fender noiseless single coils in the neck and middle, plus a kill switch.

A Soul Power body decal is, of course, included, as is a black Fender case - the model is only available in black.

Regardless of whether you enjoy Morello’s fretboard pyrotechnics, this is one nicely spec’d all-out rock guitar. It lands in March.

Jim Root Jazzmaster V4 - $1,399

Jim Root’s existing signature Jazzmaster has been serving as his primary guitar for some time, but the Slipknot guitarist has revamped the model for 2020.

The most notable change is the inclusion of Root’s new signature Daemonum EMG active pickups, as well as a Polar White finish.

As per the original, this is as stripped-back as electric guitars get, with just a single volume control, three-way pickup selector and hardtail bridge.

Other features include a slab mahogany body, maple neck with bound ebony fingerboard and 12” radius and pearloid block inlays.

It’s available from March.

Eric Johnson ‘Virginia’ Stratocaster - $2,499

Recent years have seen the legendary virtuoso turn his hand to semi-hollow designs, but for 2020, Fender has recreated Eric Johnson’s 1954 ‘Virginia’ Stratocaster, which appears on landmark albums Tones and Platinum Ah Via Musicom.

This marks the first time this guitar has been recreated, and boasts a rare rift/quartersawn sassafras body, lacquer finish, custom wiring and more.

Other info is thin on the ground right now, but we do know that this model kicks off Fender’s all-new Stories Collection, which promises to celebrate “the guitars that shaped history’s most iconic music and the details that made them unique”.

The ‘Virginia’ Strat is available in 2-Color Sunburst only from February.

Head over to Fender for more info on all the new models.

NAMM 2020: EMG has unveiled three new sets of pickups for metal ahead of this year's show, including the Jim Root signature set, a Robert Trujillo signature bass set and a 57/66-TW Dual Mode set.

The Jim Root Daemonum Signature set has been three years in the making, and has a Retro Active design. Unlike traditional open coil pickups, both the bridge and neck pickups in this set utilize stud poles in both coils. This pickup set can be heard on the entirety of Slipknot's latest album, We Are Not Your Kind.

The Jim Root Daemonum fingerboard pickup uses ceramic studs, giving it ultra-clean high-end sounds, while the bridge pickup has black steel poles and features a ceramic magnet.

Both of the pickups pack custom Retro Active preamps, which are exclusive to this set.

The Robert Trujillo "Rip Tide" set is designed for a traditional 4 string jazz bass, but is also suitable for narrow 5 string basses. Built with stainless steel caps, the set produces Trujillo's dependably beastly tone with a fresh, modern look.

Featuring EMG's solderless wiring harness, the pickups have a standard volume, volume tone setup.

A dual mode version of EMG's decade-old 57/66 set, the new 57/66-TW Dual Mode pickups feature selectable single and dual coil sounds using the company's signature three coil design.

The 66 finger board pickup uses both ceramic and alnico magnets from the single coil position, with the goal of producing cleaner, more straightforward tone. 

The 57 neck pickup, meanwhile, uses a combination of alnico and steel, and is effective in both single and dual coil positions.

The set includes EMG’s solderless wiring harness, with a push pull potentiometer for each pickup along with two standard tone controls. 

EMG's Jim Root signature set, Robert Trujillo signature set and 57/66-TW Dual Mode set are each available in early February for $229, $219 and $269, respectively.

For more info, stop by EMG.

Slipknot’s Jim Root was recently named (along with band mate Mick Thomson) the best metal guitarist in the world today, and now the electric guitar player also known as #4 can add another notch to his belt - his own DiMarzio ClipLock Quick Release Guitar Strap.

The new Jim Root #4 signature strap, like all DiMarzio ClipLock offerings, features heavy-duty plastic clips that secure to the guitar with bushings, providing super-secure fastening and allowing players to change from one guitar to another with just “a little fingertip pressure.”

The microfiber strap comes in two sizes - standard (adjusts from 43.5 to 63.5 inches) and extra short (39 to 56.5 inches) - and in a choice of either black or white with spooky red Slipknot-esque art.

The Jim Root #4 ClipLock Quick Release Guitar Strap is available for $29.99. To, um, strap one on, head to DiMarzio.

When Fender dropped the American Ultra Series this week, its fresh hot-rodded takes on classic outlines, it offered a number of neat touches - contoured heels, new neck shape, compound radius - but arguably the most significant change was the inclusion of a Jazzmaster in the line-up.

Here we have an instrument beloved of electric guitar anti-heroes, one that’s beset with playing idiosyncrasies and ended up discontinued owing to its unpopularity now appearing in a high-end, boutique guise, complete with Fender’s first-ever noiseless Jazzmaster pickups. How did this happen?

By now, we’re all familiar with Jazzmaster lore: the model was introduced in 1959 as a way to lure jazz guitarists away from Gibson courtesy of Fender’s first-ever rosewood fingerboard and newly designed single coils with wider, flatter coils, but - despite a brief love affair with surf - the design proved unpopular and was discontinued in 1980.

Part of what made the Jazz so distinctive was also what put plenty of players off: the rhythm circuit, complete with awkward roller controls, was just too dark for a lot of styles, while the bridge that accompanied the floating tremolo was prone to strings popping right out of their saddles with heavier picking.

Perhaps as a result of these idiosyncrasies, used examples would sell for relatively affordable prices on the used market, and thus the Jazzmaster went on to achieve cult status at the hands of alternative heroes such as Sonic Youth, Kevin Shields and J Mascis. Now, that, in turn, has very gradually filtered back into mainstream guitar design.

It’s arguable that Fender’s renewed interest in the model - which has appeared in all its recently launched model ranges, from Player to American Performer and Vintera - has been prompted largely by rival companies offering up their own takes over the past decade.

You need only look to the likes of the Fano JM6, Tom Anderson Raven or the Suhr Classic JM to see how other builders have taken the offset formula and given it the boutique treatment - something that was taken to its limits in 2017 as Suhr and Ian Thornley teamed up for an HSH, string-through-body signature model, custom-built for speed and versatility.

Then there are the spec tweaks seen in G&L’s 2017-launched Doheny, which equipped the outline with a Strat-style tremolo - something Fernandes had been doing back in the ’90s with its JG series, but took Fender until 2018 to achieve with its stripped-back American Performer model.

We also have one player in particular to thank for renewed interest in the Jazzmaster, and it ain’t Thurston Moore; rather, Slipknot’s masked riffsman Jim Root, who used the body as the base for his brutal, no-nonsense pairing of active humbuckers, hardtail bridge and single volume control.

You could, of course, argue that, having stripped out the floating tremolo and single coils, Root’s design ceases to be Jazzmaster. But its influence on Fender’s catalogue since is undeniable; without it, it’s unlikely the American Professional Jazzmaster would have quite such a pared-back control configuration, while the Contemporary Active Jazzmaster is practically a Jim Root signature Squier in all but name.

Team that with concessions to contemporary playability - Fender’s use of Mustang and tune-o-matic bridges, as opposed to the string-popping original, not to mention Mastery’s superior replacement - and improved switching options, and it feels like the Jazzmaster has truly come of age.

Artists have recognized that fact, too: the fretboard-spanning metal prowess of Baroness’s latest recruit Gina Gleason made her Fender’s ‘face’ for the Ultra Jazzmaster, while players as diverse as blues favorite Samantha Fish, looping superstar Tash Sultana and singer-songwriter of the moment Sam Fender have all been found wielding the model in recent years.

So what next for the offset of the moment? Well, with Fender’s announcement that it’s set to introduce more signature guitars for female artists next year than in its entire 70-year history, we’d be foolish not to bank on one of them being a Jazz.

And although its simple bolt-on design is hardly unique among the Fender catalogue in being suitable for configurations of all kinds, we’d love to see a no-holds-barred dual-humbucker American Ultra.

Metal on a Jazzmaster? 60 years since its introduction, it’s still more likely than jazz...

Slipknot have announced a 10th anniversary deluxe reissue of their fourth studio album, 2008’s All Hope is Gone. The new set, featuring re-imagined artwork and a live bonus disc containing their 2009 headlining set at Madison Square Garden, will be released on December 7.

In an Interview with Guitar World at the time of the album’s initial release, Slipknot guitarists Mick Thomson and Jim Root talked about the solos on the album.

"Right out of the gates, my lead on 'All Hope is Gone' is six-string swept arpeggios played real fast," Thomson said. "I’ve been doing that shit forever, and finally I get to play it. The band has been together for 13 years and it’s been almost 10 years since our first album came out, so I’ve been waiting a long time to do that. I lost all kinds of crazy guitar parts on our first two albums because, back then, technical guitar was 'bad.' Too many guys with poofy hair, stretch pants and pink guitars who could play like motherfuckers gave it a bad name, especially to people who weren’t guitar players. Try convincing your drummer that you still have balls and are a man, even though you spent years in your bedroom playing super technical guitar."

As for whether there was a way for listeners to determine which guitarist was playing which solo, Root said, "It’s kind of hard to say. When we were rehearsing the songs before going in the studio I was playing leads over everything. We came to the conclusion that Mick and I would go 50/50 on everything. In my head I was thinking that Mick would start the solos and I’d end them, but that were seven minutes long got chopped to four or five minutes, and some of the solos got edited out. But I still think things are split pretty evenly throughout the record."

Check out the track list for the 10th anniversary edition of All Hope is Gone below. The set can be pre-ordered here.

Disc 1: "All Hope Is Gone" 10th Anniversary Deluxe Edition

01. .Execute. 

02. Gematria (The Killing Name) 

03. Sulfur 

04. Psychosocial 

05. Dead Memories 

06. Vendetta 

07. Butcher's Hook 

08. Gehenna 

09. This Cold Black 

10. Wherein Lies Continue 

11. Snuff 

12. All Hope Is Gone

Disc 2: Live At Madison Square Garden, February 5, 2009

01. (sic) 

02. Eyeless 

03. Wait And Bleed 

04. Get This 

05. Before I Forget 

06. The Blister Exists 

07. Dead Memories 

08. Left Behind 

09. Disasterpiece 

10. Purity 

11. Everything Ends 

12. Psychosocial 

13. Duality 

14. People = Shit 

15. Surfacing 

16. Spit It Out

Today, GuitarWorld.com presents an exclusive lesson video featuring Slipknot's Jim Root.

In the new clip, which you can check out below, Root shows you how to play “Killpop” from Slipknot's latest album, .5 The Gray Chapter. The lesson is from the new Fret 12 DVD Jim Root: The Sound and the Story: .5: The Gray Chapter.

Fret 12 is also hosting a Slipknot contest: Fans can enter to win the guitar Root used to record .5 The Gray Chapter. For more information on the giveaway and to enter, visit fret12.com.

“Once we get in the studio, it sounds like us,” Slipknot's Mick Thomson told Guitar World in late 2014 in advance of .5 The Gray Chapter. “Some of it is very classic us. Some of it is slightly more experimental us.”

“We’re still evolving as a band,” Root added. “I think that’s really important for a band to do, especially after being around for so many years. Paul, before he passed away, really wanted the band to experiment a lot more, musically, with the direction of where we’re going.

"We’d done Slipknot. We’d done Iowa. I think the closest thing we’ve done to a record that Paul was very excited about was probably The Subliminal Verses. It’s very diverse. It had a little bit of everything in it. And we’re still trying to find our way. For me, and for Paul’s legacy, it’s important that we continue to evolve.”

This is an excerpt from the December 2014 issue of Guitar World. For the rest of this Slipknot story, plus features on Slash, Joe Bonamassa, Lenny Kravitz, Paul Gilbert, Motionless In White, Electric Wizard and more, including lessons, tabs and reviews of new gear from D'Angelico, Washburn, Boss, Morley, Lace Music and Carr Amps, check out the December 2014 issue at the Guitar World Online Store.

Shades of Gray: Between the death and departure of various band members, Slipknot have had a rough few years. With .5: The Gray Chapter, they channel the energy of deceased bassist Paul Gray and return with a brutal but multifaceted album.

“The future of Slipknot is always in doubt,” guitarist Jim Root says. “I always prepare for each album as if it’s gonna be the last.”

It’s a minor miracle that Slipknot have lasted as long as they have. They have nine members in their lineup, each of whom lives up to the band’s aggro metal image in one way or another, and thereby contributes to the potential for volatility.

Yet, they have endured since the group formed in Des Moines, Iowa, 19 years ago, becoming one of the heaviest and scariest bands in a genre crowded with heavy, scary acts. Some 13 years have elapsed since the band’s self-titled 2001 debut album placed them at the forefront of the then-burgeoning nu-metal scene.

“With all the different guys in the band and all the different ideas of what’s what, it’s hard to get everybody on the same page sometimes,” Root says. “We are a very tight brotherhood, but we never know what we’re going to do.”

However, nothing in Slipknot’s turbulent history has been as daunting as the death of their longtime bass player, Paul Gray, from a morphine overdose in 2010. The tragedy was compounded by the recent departure—somewhat acrimonious, apparently—of longtime drummer Joey Jordison. Because both Gray and Jordison were key songwriters for the band, Slipknot’s future has hung in the balance these past few years.

But Mick Thomson, Gray’s coguitarist, says he never really considered packing it in.

“Any devastating moment throws you into shock,” he says. “I was just hoping that no one in the band was going to get caught up in the raw emotion of the moment and make any kind of grand statement, like, ‘I will not go on without Paul.’ You say something in the heat of emotion, and sometimes later when you settle down, you think, Maybe I should take that back. Once you can think straight again, what do you do? Obviously, you gotta get on with your life. We all grieve differently. I mean, we still are grieving, every time we think about it. It’s not something you get over. You just find a way to deal with it.”

With Gray and Jordison out of the picture, the bulk of songwriting duties fell to Root on Slipknot’s new album

.5: The Gray Chapter

. The title pays homage to the deceased bassist, and the music remains true to Slipknot’s disturbing legacy.

Somber, sound-collage intros—generally assembled by Slipknot’s turntablist Sid Wilson, sampling maven Craig Jones and provocateur-in-chief Shawn “Clown” Crahan—lull the listener into a false sense of security. Then all hell breaks loose in a cacophony of car-bomb percussion as Root and Thomson’s down-tuned guitars chug and grind like some diabolic machine and lead singer Corey Taylor does his level best to projectile-vomit his tonsils out over his front teeth.

“Once we get in the studio, it sounds like us,” Thomson says of

The Gray Chapter

. “Some of it is very classic us. Some of it is slightly more experimental us.”

“We’re still evolving as a band,” Root adds. “I think that’s really important for a band to do, especially after being around for so many years. Paul, before he passed away, really wanted the band to experiment a lot more, musically, with the direction of where we’re going. We’d done Slipknot. We’d done Iowa. I think the closest thing we’ve done to a record that Paul was very excited about was probably The Subliminal Verses. It’s very diverse. It had a little bit of everything in it. And we’re still trying to find our way. For me, and for Paul’s legacy, it’s important that we continue to evolve.”

In Gray’s absence, Root and Thomson handled the majority of bass duties on the new album, although the band did some early work with Slipknot’s touring bassist Donnie Steele. “Donnie’s a great guy,” Root says. “We brought him in to help us out in the studio for a while. But it wasn’t really jivin’. He wanted to go home and get married and do all that stuff. It’s just better off for us to kinda move on from Donnie.”

The identity of the drummer on

The Gray Chapter

, as well as that of the bassist who will take Gray’s place once Slipknot hit the road, was still a closely guarded secret at press time.

“We’re not saying who the new drummer is,” Root confirms. “Even if people find out beyond a shadow of a doubt who the new drummer is, I think we’re always going to deny who it is. He might not last. He might tour with us a year and figure out we’re all insane and he can’t handle being around us. Or we might shut him out. Who knows? For Slipknot, I’d say drumming is only 50 or 60 percent of the job. The rest of it is who you are and what your personality is. Will you clash with guys like me, Mick, Clown, Corey, Craig and Chris? We all have these strong alpha-male personalities.”

Photo: Sean Murphy

This is an excerpt from the December 2014 issue of Guitar World. For the rest of this Slipknot story, plus features on Slash, Joe Bonamassa, Lenny Kravitz, Paul Gilbert, Motionless In White, Electric Wizard and more, including lessons, tabs and reviews of new gear from D'Angelico, Washburn, Boss, Morley, Lace Music and Carr Amps, check out the December 2014 issue at the Guitar World Online Store.

The following content is related to the October 2012 issue of Guitar World. For the full range of interviews, features, tabs and more, pick up the new issue on newsstands now, or in our online store.

The lunchbox-size-amp revolution continues to thrive and evolve, and once again Orange leads the way by offering the first artist model in this increasingly cool category of guitar products. The Orange Signature #4 Jim Root Terror head is the third-generation evolution of the company’s Tiny Terror Series, which started with the original Tiny Terror and progressed with the high-gain Dark Terror. Whereas the Dark Terror was based on the high-gain tones of Orange’s Thunder series, the Jim Root Terror is modeled after the Dirty channel of the Rockerverb 100, which has formed the bedrock of Root’s sound with Slipknot and Stone Sour.

FEATURES

Like the Tiny Terror and Dark Terror, the Jim Root Terror is a single-channel 15-watt amp. Also like those amps, the Dark Terror is powered by a pair of EL84 tubes and uses three 12AX7s in the preamp section and a single 12AT7 for the effect loop. The most welcome feature of the Jim Root Terror (and a first for the Tiny Terror Series) is the three-band EQ (bass/middle/treble) section, which offers considerably more tonal-shaping capabilities that the single tone/shape control on the previous models. Other controls include volume and gain knobs, a switch for selecting 15 or seven watts of output, effect loop send and return jacks on the rear panel, and three 1/4-inch speaker output jacks (two eight-ohm and one 16-ohm).

PERFORMANCE

As one might expect, the Jim Root Terror’s three-band EQ section provides significantly different tonal character than that of its predecessors. While the amp produces more than sufficient gain, the EQ has a mighty midrange roar and growl that makes it sound more like a hot-rodded Seventies amp than a modern metal monster. The amp doesn’t produce quite enough bottom-end wallop to convince guitarists that they’re playing through a larger head, but with all controls full out it’s still hard and heavy enough for many metal styles.

Even better, the amp responds quite nicely when you donkey punch it with an overdrive, distortion, boost or graphic EQ pedal, taking the extra aggression in stride while retaining its signature character. With delay or reverb patched into the effect loop, the tones are positively studio or stadium worthy, and if your band has a rhythm guitarist to handle the ultralow frequencies, it’s not much of a stretch for a lead guitarist to gig with this amp by miking the Terror played through a 2x12 or 4x12 cabinet.

Guitar World visited the Orange booth at the 2012 Winter NAMM show in Anaheim, California, and shot this demo of several new Orange amps.

The amps in the video include the OR-50, the OR-15, the #4 Jim Root Signature model and the Micro Terror.

To get a closer look at some of these amps -- and the entire Orange booth at the NAMM show -- check out the photo gallery below.

For more about Orange amps, check out their official website right here. And be sure to check out all the latest NAMM videos, photos and new-product information at our special NAMM 2012 page.

Photos: Cindy Moorhead, Damian Fanelli

Squier is excited to introduce three new artist signature models, the Avril Lavigne Telecaster, the Jim Root Telecaster and the Mikey Way Mustang Bass.

The three signature models promise star-like vibe and tone at incredible Squier value.

The new lavish, black-on-black Avril Lavigne Telecaster joins Lavigne's chart-topping signature Tele, and features several striking touches, including a three-ply pickguard, knurled black flat-top volume control knob, a black headstock with die-cast turners, and a distinctive 12th-fret skull and crossbones logo.

Designed in cooperation with Slipknot/Stone Sour guitar speed demon Jim Root, the Jim Root Telecaster boasts several foreboding features, most notably an elegant satin-matte finish in black or white, starkly simple single-knob/single switch control layout, black die-cast tuners and other black hardware, and two pulverizing passive humbucking pickups with black covers.

The Mikey Way Mustang Bass, designed with the input of My Chemical Romance bassist Mikey Way, takes the classic Mustang Bass and amps it through the roof with a dazzling large-flake Silver Sparkle finish with black racing stripes, a single seismic humbucking pickup with a black cover, and a black headstock with Way's signature on the back.

Also in the signature series are the Simon Neil Signature Stratocaster and the James Johnston Jazz Bass guitars. Released in Europe in 2009, these popular signature models designed in collaboration with the Scottish rockers are now made available worldwide.

For more information, and to locate a dealer near you, go to www.squierguitars.com.

They’re named for a drink and related to a band of mask-wearing dudes from Des Moines. But what Guitar World readers really want to know is…

What were some of the ideas behind the writing and recording of the new Stone Sour album, Audio Secrecy? —Ronnie Stahl

JIM ROOT It was fueled by a little anger, a little insecurity, a little bit of God complex, like, “This is the greatest shit in the world”—along with feeling like, “I don’t know if this shit’s worth anything.” [laughs] I was kind of right on the fence with everything, so every day was a different emotion. I’m my own worst critic.

JOSH RAND It was definitely a trying process this time around. The whole idea for us was not to recreate [2006’s] Come What(ever) May. On a couple of occasions, someone submitted a song—all five of us in the group write—and the other guys would be like, “We’ve already been there, done that.” As the writer of the song, that kind of thing can make you a little angry. I would say that between writing, preproduction and recording, we experienced every emotion possible.

What were your main guitar and amp setups when recording Audio Secrecy? —Raymond Scott

ROOT We had an endless list of amps and guitars at our disposal. My main guitar for the heavy tracks was my prototype white Telecaster. For clean guitar tones, I used a Strat and my Gretsch Brian Setzer model.

My basic amp setup for heavy tones was an Orange Rockerverb 100 with a Bogner Uberschall that was modded for me. The Orange went through an Orange cabinet, and the Uberschall went through an older Marshall cabinet loaded with Greenbacks. We used a Little Labs PCP [guitar splitter] to blend my guitar’s signal with those two amps. I also used a Budda combo on a lot of stuff. For the cleaner stuff, my amps were a late-Sixties Vox AC30 combo and a Bat Cat Hot Cat.

RAND My main guitar was a candy-apple PRS and a Hughes & Kettner Triamp. That was my main guitar for recording. And it’s the same live.

Josh, since Jim also plays guitar in Slipknot, does he ever write something that you think just isn’t right for Stone Sour? —Dan C.

RAND Actually, I’m the one who brings all the heavy stuff to Stone Sour. A perfect example is the song “The Pessimist,” which hasn’t been released yet. It’s actually the heaviest, fastest song that we’ve ever done, which is sort of why it got shelved. I used the Hindu scale for the solo, and I consider it the best solo I’ve recorded. It’s probably the fastest solo I’ve ever played, and I even harmonized it in thirds. It’s pretty cool. But of course it probably will never come out. [laughs]

What is the origin of the name Stone Sour? —Kevin

RAND I wasn’t in the band at the time, but according to the story, the band had a meeting to come up with a name. The original drummer, Joel Ekman, brought a drink menu to help get some ideas going. Corey liked Stone Sour—he thought the name stuck out.

ROOT [laughs] There was a point in time where we were trying to change the name before we put out the first record. We considered all sorts of names—everything from Tarantula Bomb to Superego to Section 8. Some of them were already taken, and some of them were kind of campy sounding. So we just decided to stick with Stone Sour. After all, what’s in a name?

How do you guys split up the guitar duties in the studio? —Nicholas Zarahrias

RAND We just play. Jim likes to do all the ear candy and overlaying, and I usually play the main rhythm track. As for solos, we tend to split them up. On the first two records, whoever wrote the song played the solo, but this time around, Nick [Raskulinecz, producer] divided them up between us. I initially wasn’t going to play any solos on this record, but I was forced to. [laughs] I played the solos on “Bitter End,” “Perfect” and the first half of “Mission Statement.” I’ve already proven to myself that I can play fast, so this time out I wanted to work on some voicings and things that I needed to improve upon.

ROOT In fact, Corey [Taylor, vocalist] plays a solo on “Pieces.” Originally, I was gonna play it, but it was one of those days when I was off doing something else. Because of time constraints, Nick decided to have Corey do it. It’s a good solo—it’s pentatonic, which is the way Corey plays—and it really fits the song, and that’s all that matters.

Jim, in Slipknot you guys wear masks, but Stone Sour doesn’t. Is it weird to go from one to the other? —Robert Wilson Jr.

ROOT It’s absolutely weird, and every time we switch gears to do an album with Stone Sour, it’s something I kind of freak out about. I’m just starting to feel comfortable in my own skin without a mask onstage. When you’ve got a mask on, you’re kind of invincible. It’s almost like nobody can see you, and you can do what you want to do without consequences. But when you don’t have it on, you kind of feel naked up there. It is a bit weird.

Josh, what’s the craziest thing you’ve seen in the audience while playing? —Jon

RAND It would probably be the two lesbians who sat right in front of me at one of the shows on the last tour. They actually got removed, because they started taking off clothes and were just going for it. Security came and took them away. I really didn’t move very much during that show. [laughs] I was like, Wow, this is insane!

Jim, what was your fondest memory of your Slipknot bandmate Paul Gray, who recently passed away? —Lisa D.

ROOT Probably one of the greatest things about Paul was that he had so much love for everything. I know that he would have been the guy that would have listened to our record and genuinely been really into it. And he would have had a lot to say about the recording and the writing and some of the melodies. It’s his genuine love of people that I really remember.