Searching for purity (FUZZ magazine 2000): Difference between revisions

[The original article was published in Swedish. Provisional translation by the Allan Holdsworth Archives. The translator has a working knowledge of Swedish and English, but they are not his first languages. Allan’s quotes must not be read as word for word transcriptions, as they have been back-translated from Swedish to English. Feel free to suggest improvements to the translation.]

That the guitar's tone decays shortly after the attack, is known to everyone who’s searched for the perfect guitar sound, and for "endless sustain". In the early days of the rock, different approaches were used to achieving sustain; deforming the speaker, cranking the volume to max, or using a fuzz pedal. Allan Holdsworth's idea of sound was different, he wanted to "play a wind instrument, not a guitar" and what he heard was the tone flow and expressivity of the saxophone. After a few years of playing the guitar, he discovered that with the help of amplification distortion, a powerful vibrato and legato technique, a more expressive tone was within reach.