California Noise Tinkering With Hardcore and Heavy Metal in Southern California

California Noise: Tinkering with Hardcore and Heavy Metal in Southern California
Author(s): Steve Waksman

Source: Social Studies of Science, Vol. 34, No. 5, Special Issue on Sound Studies: New Technologies
and Music (Oct., 2004), pp. 675-702
Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.
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SSS
ABSTRACT
Tinkeringhas long figured prominently in the history of the electric
guitar. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, two guitarists based in the burgeoning
Southern Californiahard rock scene adapted technological tinkering to their musical
endeavors. EdwardVan Halen, lead guitarist for Van Halen, became the most
celebrated rock guitar virtuoso of the 1980s, but was just as noted amongst guitar
aficionados for his tinkering with the electric guitar, designing his own instruments
out of the remains of guitars that he had dismembered in his own workshop. Greg
Ginn, guitarist for BlackFlag, ran his own amateur radio supply shop before forming
the band, and named his noted independent record label, SST,after the solid state
transistorsthat he used in his own tinkering. This paper explores the ways in which
music-basedtinkering played a part in the construction of virtuosity around the
figure of Van Halen, and the definition of artistic 'independence' for the more
confrontational BlackFlag. It further posits that tinkering in popular music cuts
across musical genres, and joins music to broader cultural currents around
technology, such as technological enthusiasm, the do-it-yourself (DIY)ethos, and the
use of technology for the purposes of fortifying masculinity.
Keywords do-it-yourself, electric guitar, masculinity,popular music, technology,
sound
California Noise:
Tinkering with Hardcore and Heavy Metal in
Southern California
Steve Waksman
Tinkering has long been a part of the history of the electric guitar. Indeed,
much of the work of electric guitar design, from refinements in body shape
to alterations in electronics, could be loosely classified as tinkering. Particularly in the early years of the instrument, during the 1930s and 1940s,
many guitar designers worked in their garages or backyards, following a
rather informal process of experimentation and adjustment in pursuit of
results that were sometimes not clearly defined until they were achieved.
Most intriguingly, guitarists themselves have often taken part in the tinkering process. The impulse to rearrange technological details has often
coincided with a certain disposition towards sound and musicianship,
combining to form a way of hearing through technology that, while not
necessarily unique to the electric guitar, has been strongly shaped by the
instrument and its players.' Such impulses have often cut across musical
Social Studies of Science 34/5(October 2004) 675-702
? SSS and SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks CA, New Delhi)
ISSN 0306-3127 DOI: 10.1177/0306312704047614
www.sagepublications.com
676
Social Studies of Science 34/5
categories, so that guitarists who play in markedly different styles have

nonetheless exhibited similar tendencies in the way they interact with the
electric guitar as a cultural and technological artifact. Writing about this
phenomenon elsewhere, I have identified a 'structure of desire focused
upon the electric guitar that has little to do with music, and more to do
with the ways in which the electric guitar as a material, technological object
engenders (and genders) certain modes of interaction' (Waksman, 1999:
294). The parenthetical qualifier is meant to remind us that, as in many
spheres of activity, tinkering with the electric guitar has been a predominantly masculine endeavor, the end of which could be deemed the
fortification of manhood as much as the specific technological or musical
goals that are sought.2
Eddie Van Halen and Greg Ginn are two guitarists who exemplify
these patterns: latter-day tinkerers whose involvement with electronics
figured significantly in their larger musical careers. Those careers, in turn,
have been as markedly different as the guitar styles of the two figures.
Eddie Van Halen spent 20 years as lead guitarist for his namesake band,
Van Halen, one of the most widely successful heavy metal bands of the
later 20th century. Ginn, by contrast, spent almost 10 years as leader of
Black Flag, a groundbreaking band that achieved limited commercial
success but had considerable influence upon the shape of US punk rock,
leading it towards a new formulation that became known as 'hardcore'. As
a guitarist, Van Halen was perhaps the most prominent and widely influential player of the era, a figure considered by many guitar enthusiasts to have
reconfigured the terms of electric guitar virtuosity in a hard rock setting.3
Ginn's influence was more of an underground variety, but within that less
spotlighted sphere he was acknowledged to be a major punk guitar stylist.
Whereas Van Halen's guitar style was most noted for its incredible speed
and precision, Ginn was recognized as a master of calculated imprecision
whose playing was full of apparently 'wrong' notes, the dissonance of
which created a more jarring effect than that of Van Halen's more linear
approach.
Different as they have been, the careers of Van Halen and Ginn both
took root in Southern California, a region of the US that was a prime
location for the revivification of the hard rock styles with which they were
associated during the late 1970s and early 1980s. As such, the two
guitarists embodied the different styles, ethics, and aspirations that defined
rock music in Los Angeles and its surroundings during these years.
Coincidentally or not, Southern California has also been home to a strong
current of guitar-based tinkering that links Van Halen and Ginn to an
earlier generation of figures such as Les Paul, Leo Fender, and Paul
Bigsby.4 Within this broader history, tinkering has served a number of
interrelated functions: it has been a means of exploring the ways in which
technology can be put in the service of creating a certain kind of sound; it
has been a way for musicians and instrument makers (two categories that
often blur together) to redesign the electric guitar to more individualized
specifications; and it has been a mode of self-directed activity in which
Waksman:California Noise
677
musicians have sought to carve out a sphere of 'independence' from the

broader structures that govern the music and guitar-manufacturing
industries.
For Eddie Van Halen, all three of these impulses have been at work,
though the case of Van Halen also demonstrates the ways in which the
results of tinkering can be reincorporated back into the larger industries
surrounding the electric guitar, which in turn allows the standardization of
the instrument to be offset by the continued appearance of innovation and
individualized design. For Greg Ginn, the third of these impulses - the will
towards independence - has been most prominent. Unlike Van Halen,
Ginn's tinkering efforts were not concentrated upon the guitar itself. But
his engagement with amateur radio played a crucial formative role in his
development of a self-managed infrastructure for the production and
distribution of the music of his band, Black Flag, and the music of other
like-minded bands. Taken together, the careers of Ginn and Van Halen
create a sort of counterpoint regarding the history of the electric guitar,
guitarists, and technology that cuts through some of the perceived differences between the musical genres seen to contain them - heavy metal and
hardcore punk - and yet remains shaped by those differences in the end.5
Do-It-Yourself
To begin to situate the efforts of Van Halen and Ginn in broader historical
and cultural currents, it will be useful to briefly explore two concepts, one
from the history of technology and the other from more general usage, but
with a specific relevance both to uses of technology and to popular music.
The first concept is that of technological enthusiasm. As elaborated in the
anthology, PossibleDreams: Enthusiasm for Technologyin America (Wright,
1992), technological enthusiasm is the confluence of beliefs and activities
that accompanied the growing presence of technology in everyday life in
the USA starting in the 19th century. Enthusiasm for technology is what
led individuals not only to use technology, but also to take pleasure in it,
and to apply themselves to it as a form of recreation. Certain inventions radio, the automobile, 'hi-fi' stereo, and arguably the electric guitar - did
much to stimulate enthusiasm for technology at the popular level, and
certain publications - especially Popular Mechanics and its rival Popular
Science, and after 1967 Guitar Player magazine amongst guitarists - gave
regular advice to readers on a range of technical practices, as well as
constructing a supporting ideology surrounding the value of technological
endeavors.6
Tied to this notion of technological enthusiasm is the second concept,
that of 'do-it-yourself' (DIY). In popular music, and especially in hardcore
punk, DIY has become a core value in some quarters, connoting resistance
to the controlling and appropriative structures of the music industry.
However, as historian Steven Gelber has shown, DIY as a category of
activity has its roots in the spread of the suburbs that reshaped US social
life beginning in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. According to
678
Gelber, DIY was driven by two simultaneous impulses: the desire to

recover manual labor as the proper realm of masculine activity at a time
when many men found themselves part of a growing class of white-collar
workers; and the desire to carve out a distinctly masculine sphere within
the increasingly isolated, feminized space of the late Victorian suburban
home (Gelber, 1997: 73). Tools thus became a key element of suburban
masculinity, while the house 'was transformed from a place in which to do
things to a place on which to do things' (1997: 81). Gelber cites a 1912
article from Suburban Life magazine as likely the first published usage of
the phrase 'Do-It-Yourself' - in an article that encouraged readers to paint
their own homes rather than turning the job over to professionals - and
traces the development of the term into one of the dominant features of
suburban life by the post-World War II era in the USA (1997: 79).
Summing up the multiple meanings inhering in DIY, Gelber notes that
such activities:
were a jumbleof contradictions:they were leisurethat was work-likeand
chores that were leisurely;they produced outcomes with real economic
value that might actuallycost more in time and money than the product
was worth; they were performedby middle-classmen acting like bluecollar workers and blue-collarworkers acting like middle-class homeowners. (1997: 82)
Although more recent musical variants of DIY activity and philosophy

have changed some of the terms of the phenomenon, the suburban, homecentered beginnings of DIY remain a crucial and overlooked precedent
that continues to inform contemporary manifestations.
These two strains - technological enthusiasm and DIY - intersected in
several cultural locations, most importantly for the present argument in the
history of radio. In her various studies of radio, Susan Douglas has
highlighted the efforts of amateur radio operators as veritable 'explorers' of
the ether who have constituted a uniquely 'active, committed, and participatory audience' from the early years of radio to the present day (Douglas,
1987: 205).7 With the advent of the inexpensive crystal radio receiver in
1906, young men took to the airwaves by the thousands, seeking out
signals from faraway locations (1987: 195-96). While amateur radio enthusiasts may not have made the home itself the object of their endeavors in
the manner described by Gelber, their activities were decidedly homebased, and were implicated in the process of fortifying masculinity within
the domestic sphere. For radio amateurs, listening was regularly accompanied by tinkering with the device of the radio itself. As Douglas notes:
In the hands of amateurs,all sorts of technologicalrecyclingand adaptive
reuse took place. Discarded photographyplates were wrapped with
foil and became condensers.The brass spheres from an old bedstead
were transformedinto a sparkgap, and were connected to an ordinary
automobile ignition coil-cum-transmitter.Model T ignition coils were
favorites.(1987: 197)
679
The goal of such endeavors was to increase the ability of the radio set to
receive signals from remote locations, yet the means to this end - technological tinkering and the movement across frequencies in search of a clear
signal - were just as much a part of the appeal for the amateur operators.
In this regard, radio tinkering became a model for popular uses of
technology that were geared towards active engagement with the technological artifact rather than idle consumption.
Early radio history, and the activities of amateurs in particular, also
established a distinctive approach to the relationship between sound and
technology. Small refinements in the technological construction of a radio
set could mean a large improvement in the ability to tune into different
frequencies. Amateur operators thus became attuned to the quality of
sound that technological adjustments might bring. This aspect of radiobased tinkering carried into the endeavors of early electric guitarists and
guitar designers, some of the most prominent of whom were amateur radio
enthusiasts. Among this group were Leo Fender and Les Paul, two of the
principal figures in the development of the solid-body electric guitar.
According to former Fender associate Forrest White, Fender was 'hooked
on electronics' by the time he finished high school in 1928, and had 'an
amateur "ham" radio station with the call letters W-6-DOE' (White, 1994:
4). Fender himself credited his long experience with radio and electronics
as the key reason for his willingness to experiment with the design of the
electric guitar, and to foreground 'the utility aspects of an item' over
appearance (Wheeler, 1992: 61).8 Les Paul, meanwhile, built his first
crystal radio set in 1927, only two years before he put together his earliest
effort at an electric guitar from pieces of his father's phonograph set
(Shaughnessy, 1993: 30). Shortly thereafter, Paul began transmitting his
own broadcasts from the basement of his mother's house, something he
would continue to do (outside of her house) long after his musical career
had begun (1993: 33). Involvement with radio was a key stimulus for
Fender's and Paul's respective interests in electronics, which in turn laid
the foundation for their innovations in electric guitar design, innovations
that were primarily meant to clarify the sound of the instrument.
Borrowing from technology scholar Wiebe Bijker, one could observe
that radio provided one of the main 'technological frames' within which
Fender and Paul formulated their guitar-based experiments. As defined by
Bijker, a technological frame is composed of 'the concepts and techniques
employed by a community in its problem solving. ... This makes a
technological frame into a combination of current theories, tacit knowledge, engineering practice ... specialized testing procedures, goals, and
handling and using practice' (1987: 168). The principal frame existing
around the electric guitar in its early years (1930s to 1940s) was one that
assumed definition out of the effort to convert an acoustic instrument into
an electric one. Most guitar builders and manufacturers involved in
making electric guitars held to the notion that amplified sound was still
largely reliant upon the acoustic qualities of the instrument: the hollowed
interior, quality of wood, shape and size of the sound holes, and other
680
related features. Moreover, there was an idea about how a guitar should
look - with a certain type of curvature in the body, and sound holes placed
in a particular arrangement - that set limits upon experimentation with the
amplification of the instrument's signal.
If we term this ensemble of beliefs and practices the 'amplified
acoustic' frame, then we can note that Fender and Paul brought into the
sphere of electric guitar design a competing frame drawn from their work
with radio, work which allowed them to isolate the specifically electronic
elements of sound production from the acoustic design of the conventional
guitar."The solid-body electric was created according to the premise that
the amplified signal produced by an electric guitar could be both strengthened and clarified if the resonating surface of the instrument's body was
made more stable. Sound holes and hollow interiors gave way to a solid
piece of wood, which in turn allowed the vibration of the guitar's string to
be amplified through the magnetic qualities of the instrument's pickup free
of extraneous vibrations caused by the sympathetic surface of the guitar."'
Elimination of sympathetic resonances and the resulting distortion of tone
had been sought by other guitar manufacturers, but Paul and Fender
independently reached a solution that fundamentally reshaped the instrument and placed new priority upon the amplified signal as such, an
innovation that was indebted to their absorption of a technological frame
in which tinkering with technological details was the key to achieving
desired sound quality.
Leo Fender and Les Paul also did much of the work for which they
were most noted while in Southern California. Fender, a native Californian, began his tinkering while growing up near the Orange County
suburb of Anaheim, and established his Fender guitar company in the
nearby town of Fullerton. Paul was not native to the area, but relocated
there during the 1940s, and continued to refine his design for a solid-body
guitar as well as his techniques for multiple-track recording in the garage of
his 'small stucco bungalow house' (Shaughnessy, 1993: 124). Southern
California was truly a hub of electric guitar activity during these years,
even beyond the efforts of Fender and Paul, and the possible explanations
are several. Hollywood was drawing increasing numbers of professional
musicians due to the mix of film, radio, and recording opportunities for
work."1Paul's move to California was part of this larger wave of migration.
Other musicians were arriving in the state as part of the general flow of new
residents, as California entered a major boom period in both its population
and its economy. Many came from the south-western USA, a region where
the electric guitar had already found considerable favor among jazz,
country, and western swing musicians; Leo Fender was in regular contact
with many of this latter group. In the cases of Paul and Fender, the pattern
of settlement and residential development also figured prominently. While
its population expanded, Southern California became the most rapidly
suburbanized region of the USA; and as such the area became home to
more than its fair share of tinkerers, who took advantage of the extra space
afforded by the garages that were a standard feature of single-family houses
Waksman: California Noise
681
in what was also the most automobile-oriented region of the country.12

Southern California, in other words, became a locus of DIY activity of the
sort detailed by Gelber, and the electric guitar flourished in this burgeoning terrain.
Heavy Metal and Hardcore

Eddie Van Halen and his band began playing around Southern California
in the mid-1970s. At the time, the city's native rock scene was dominated
by the country-tinged styles of performers such as Linda Ronstadt and the
Eagles. According to Barney Hoskyns, chronicler of Southern California
rock, this melodic sound 'was the American sound of the mid seventies',
and defined the musical image of California for much of the nation
(Hoskyns, 1996: 272). Van Halen was working in a markedly different vein,
purveying a hard rock style that had seen its commercial peak earlier in the
decade with the success of bands such as Grand Funk, Black Sabbath, and
Led Zeppelin. Local hard rock and heavy metal units had not enjoyed a
high profile even in these earlier years, although touring bands like Led
Zeppelin had often used Los Angeles as a way station, and the city earned
a reputation for hosting some notorious offstage debauchery. In this
setting, Van Halen made its way in the manner followed by so many local
bands, playing by Eddie Van Halen's account 'everywhere and anywhere,
from backyard parties to places the size of your bathroom.
We used to
....
1978:
print up flyers and stuff them into high school lockers' (Obrecht,
The
band's
came
at
the
in
Starwood
Club
1977, at a
28).
breakthrough
show booked by local music impresario Rodney Bingenheimer - who also
figured prominently in the local promotion of punk and new wave - where
they impressed Warner Brothers record executive Mo Ostin and producer
Ted Templeman. Shortly thereafter the band recorded its first album for
Warners, and its success on both a local and national scale skyrocketed
upon that album's release the following year.
As the band Van Halen's profile rose, so too did that of the band's
guitarist. Eddie Van Halen was quickly hailed as a major new presence in
the world of rock guitar, winning the 1978 Guitar Player magazine reader's
poll award for Best New Talent, and winning in 1979 the first of five
straight reader's poll awards for Best Rock Guitarist (the magazine imposes
a five-year limit for any single guitarist to win a given category). The first
Van Halen album had spotlighted the guitarist's technical feats as much as
the band's ability to infuse heavy rock and roll with melodic, pop-worthy
hooks. 'Eruption', the album's second track, was described by one writer to
sound like 'a Bach organ study. Which is a hell of a thing to hear coming
out of an electric guitar through a Marshall stack' (Considine, 1985: 47). A
brief instrumental track of solo electric guitar, less than two minutes long,
'Eruption' found the guitarist interweaving blues-based pentatonic licks
with melodic lines more 'classical' in nature.13The third and final section
of the piece drew the most attention, as Van Halen displayed his facility
with the technique of two-handed tapping, using the index finger of his
682
Social Studies of Science 3415
right hand to fret notes along with the more customary fingers of the left to
produce a rapidly ascending succession of arpeggios within which the
harmonic center was continually displaced and relocated. Punctuated by
tremolo bar-induced growls, staccato picking, and delivered with a reverbsoaked, heavy crunch of distortion, 'Eruption' was designed to signify
'state-of-the-art' rock guitar, and it became the measure of a new model of
hard rock virtuosity that exerted considerable influence throughout the
next decade.
While Van Halen the band was moving from local rock aspirants to
national and international success, another wave of bands was emerging on
the Southern California scene. The Los Angeles punk scene began to take
shape at a time roughly contiguous with the emergence of the more noted
scenes in New York and London. Long considered to have been a largely
derivative offshoot of the activities in New York and London, Los Angeles
and its surrounding region has more recently been acknowledged to have
hosted a self-defined scene on a par with those other locations.'4
Most accounts of Southern California punk emphasize two stages in
its development. The first stage began around 1977, was centered around
Hollywood, and was driven by an art/bohemian element who were reacting
against the perceived blandness of 1970s music and the relative dearth of a
live music scene in Los Angeles. X was perhaps the most celebrated band
of this first punk wave in Los Angeles, though bands such as the Weirdos,
the Screamers, the Urinals, and the Germs were also prominent in these
formative years. The second stage emerged around 1979, and was in many
ways a reaction against the first by a younger group of bands and fans who
were based not in the city proper, but in the suburbs to the south. Grounds
for reaction against the first wave of Southern California punk were often
unclearly expressed, but seem to have had much to do with the closed,
cliquish nature of the Los Angeles scene as it had developed. The newer
bands and their audiences were thus trying to carve out a space for
themselves in a scene where they felt somewhat marginal. Three other
features of the new wave of Los Angeles punk also assumed importance.
The music became coarser, faster, and in many ways more uniform than
the styles favored by the earlier bands (who were still very much part of the
scene). Audience behavior followed from and further prompted these
stylistic shifts with the rise of an intensely physical mode of interaction that
came to be called 'slam dancing'. And the notion of DIY, long a tacit
principle of punk, was further codified as one of its defining features.
Phase two of Southern California punk came to be known as 'hardcore'; and while the first wave of Los Angeles punk had largely been
overshadowed by its New York and London counterparts, Southern California was generally acknowledged to have been the leading location in
punk's resurgence, along with Washington, DC. In California, no band
marked the break between the two phases of punk development as decisively as Black Flag. Following a tireless regime of practicing, developing
an intensive and exhausting touring strategy that took the band out of
California and into areas of the USA that had rarely been exposed to live
683
punk, and issuing a discordant, distortion-soaked, quick-fire set of songs

that upped the ante on punk aggression, Black Flag helped set the terms
for a significant revision of punk. Noted for their intensity onstage and on
record, Black Flag were also distinctive for the particular approach to
artistic 'independence' taken by the band, most symbolized by the record
label, SST: this was headed by guitarist Greg Ginn and released all of the
band's records as well as those of other punk and independent rock bands
throughout the 1980s. Through the efforts of Ginn, and of others such as
Ian MacKaye of Washington, DC, hardcore came to symbolize not only a
renewal of punk's musical energy but also a move to gain control over the
means of musical production, a key facet of the punk version of DIY.15
As much as hardcore was a reaction against an earlier definition of
punk, it stood in even starker opposition to more commercially successful
forms of rock such as heavy metal; and metal musicians and fans in turn
were likely to hold derisive views of hardcore. Some sense of the terms of
generic opposition, which significantly informed the work of both Eddie
Van Halen and Greg Ginn, can be drawn from a 1982 article in Hit Parader
magazine.16 'Heavy Metal vs. Hard Core' was the title of the record review
section in the October 1982 issue, in which critic Roy Trakin pitted the two
genres against one another. By Trakin's account, heavy metal - once the
domain of good-humored rock 'n' roll - had become stylistically rigid and
overly serious in its intentions; and hardcore had usurped much of the
energy that heavy metal once held as its own.
At the center of this comparison stood Van Halen and Black Flag. On
the heavy metal side, Trakin announces Van Halen to be 'America's answer
to the absence of Led Zep [pelin]', and goes on to declare that the band
illustrates 'precisely what's wrong with heavy metal today'. Accusing the
band of allowing cover versions to provide the bulk of the catchy hooks on
their latest album, Diver Down, Trakin sums up his rapid assessment of
Van Halen with the question, 'Should the narcissistic celebration of pleasure be an end in itself, even if Eddie Van Halen can play his ass off?
Shallow no matter how you slice it' (Trakin, 1982: 23). On the hardcore
side, Trakin posits Black Flag to be the 'savage, demented' underside to
Van Halen's version of 'life in the SoCal fast lane', as judged by the
evidence of their debut long-playing record (LP), Damaged. Apart from the
difference in attitude, Trakin most highlights the abilities of the bands'
respective guitarists, and claims that Black Flag guitarist Greg Ginn 'is
guaranteed to blow away any HM [heavy metal] guitarist extant, and that
includes you, Mr Bertinelli, er, Van Halen' (1982: 23). Referring to Eddie
Van Halen's celebrity wife, actress Valerie Bertinelli, Trakin draws a proverbial line in the sand, intimating that Van Halen's recognized status as a
guitar virtuoso is too much bound to the trappings of stardom, whereas
Ginn shoots straight from his rock and roll hip without such illusions of
grandeur diverting his aim.
Trakin's consideration of heavy metal and hardcore offers evidence of
some of the stakes involved in defining the difference between the two
684
genres at a transitional moment in their respective histories. Whereas metal

was proving to be a path to success on a mass scale, hardcore was staking
out a place of opposition to the music industry at large. Whereas metal
found guitarists like Van Halen expanding the limits of technical virtuosity,
hardcore issued a challenge to the notion that virtuosity equalled 'good
music'. Yet one is left to wonder what Trakin would make of the fact that
Van Halen built his own guitars, driven by an impulse not so far removed
from that exhibited by Ginn in his work with ham radio. While the
tinkering of Van Halen and Ginn was ultimately caught within the larger
structures of their respective careers, there is a point at which the fascination with wires and circuits exhibits a common pursuit.
Kick Ass and Scream
Of course, tinkering is itself far from unified as a field of endeavor. In the
growing literature on tinkering in the history of technology, a number of
key differences emerge as one surveys the range of tinkering styles. One
such distinction has to do with the degree of commitment to technological
experimentation as such. As Sherry Turkle (1984) and Robert Post (1994),
among others, have noted, tinkering often involves an inversion of the
usual means-end relationship that governs technological work. Many
tinkerers develop 'a fascination with the machine itself' that overrides any
specific technical goal (Turkle, 1984: 201); others participate in tinkering
in a more goal-oriented manner, out of pragmatic rather than passionate
motives. Another important distinction has to do with the extent to which
the technological object is modified through the tinkering process. Some
tinkerers essentially create their objects from scratch, as did many radio
amateurs, and in a different context, some of the drag racing enthusiasts
portrayed by Robert Post. Others may assemble a device in a more
prescribed fashion, through prepackaged kits such as the widely available
crystal radio assembly sets or the television assembly kits that were popular
in postwar Japan (Takahashi, 2000: 477). Meanwhile, a wide range of
tinkerers may satisfy themselves with making adjustments of greater or
lesser consequence to already assembled devices. Indeed this is probably
the most common form of tinkering, one that is widely applied to automobiles, stereo equipment, and a number of other items including the
electric guitar.
Among the figures under discussion, Les Paul and Eddie Van Halen
had the strongest fascination with the electric guitar as a 'machine' unto
itself, and were most motivated in their tinkering by a passionate involvement with the instrument. It was Paul and Fender, though, who most
substantially revised the construction of the electric guitar with their
coterminous creation of a solid-body design. As we shall see, Van Halen's
work with the electric guitar was more of the 'mix and match' variety. He
did not fundamentally rethink the design of the instrument, but substantially rearranged some of the existing features and styles of the electric
685
guitar, creatively appropriating elements from different models and combining them into a roughly constructed instrument that met his specifications. Greg Ginn's tinkering, in turn, was far less concentrated upon the
guitar itself. A radio tinkerer like Paul and Fender, he did not emulate the
path whereby radio provided a frame for rethinking the contours of electric
guitar design. Nonetheless, Ginn did make some alterations to his chosen
instrument that are illuminating in light of his anti-virtuosic musical style,
and the guitar that he played offered an unusual range of options even in its
unmodified form. Further connecting the efforts of Van Halen and Ginn
was the way that masculinity figured into their guitar-based pursuits.
Different as the two guitarists are in style and ethos, both used the electric
guitar in ways that reinforced the instrument's long-standing role as a tool
suited to distinctly masculine endeavors.
When Eddie Van Halen's star began to rise, attention was drawn not only
to his virtuosic guitar technique, but also to the peculiar qualities of the
instrument that he played. It was an odd assemblage, painted red with
white lines intersecting across its surface, and with loose routing holes and
wires around the pickup. Other guitarists might have played custom-built
instruments, but this guitar had a different aura - it seemed more piecemeal, more DIY. And it was disclosed in interviews that Van Halen had
indeed built the guitar himself, as he'd been doing for some years. How the
young guitarist came to build his own guitars is not entirely clear. He does
not seem to have had any earlier involvement in electronics, before he
began his tinkering with instruments. Instead, his tinkering appears to have
been motivated more directly by his attachment to the guitar, and by his
desire to play a guitar that had features unavailable on the commercially
manufactured models of the day.
During the 1970s, and still today, the dominant electric guitar models
among rock guitarists were the Gibson Les Paul and the Fender Stratocaster. Playing upon one of these guitars was a measure of taste, of
achievement (for by the 1970s the two guitars had become rather expensive), and of preference, for the Les Paul and the Stratocaster had
rather different features. Certainly the two guitars looked different, with
the Les Paul's wider, single-horn body contrasting with the more streamlined, double-horn appearance of the Strat. More importantly for the
working guitarist, they also sounded different. The sound of a solid-body
electric guitar is determined primarily by the pickups. Gibson Les Paul
guitars have double-coil, or humbucking, pickups, while Stratocasters have
single-coil pickups. The former produces a rounder, more full tone with
fewer highs and less tendency towards feedback, while the latter produces a
more trebly tone that can be desirable when playing lead guitar lines meant
to cut through the sound of a band. Stratocasters are also distinctive for
featuring a tremolo bar attached to the bridge of the instrument, which
allows the player to alter the pitch of individual notes in a manner
analogous to bending the strings of the guitar with the fingers, but with the
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tremolo bar the direction of change tends to be downwards rather than

upwards, and more radical shifts in pitch can be achieved.
Eddie Van Halen's decision to build his own guitars was in one sense
grounded in a rejection of the preset features and the preordained status
that playing a Les Paul or Stratocaster would have offered. Speaking in
1995, the guitarist dismissed the notion that there was a special appeal to
using these long-hailed classics of electric guitar design: 'The electric guitar
has not changed a fucking bit since Leo Fender and Les Paul. I get the
same sounds out of my guitars that I get out of a Les Paul or any other
humbucking-style guitar' (Guitar World,1997: 146). Some years earlier he
had characterized the Les Paul as 'just the cliched guitar, the rock and roll
guitar', and while Edward liked the sound the guitar generated, he wasn't
happy with aspects of the design, especially the lack of a tremolo bar
(Obrecht, 1980: 75). The physical properties of the Stratocaster were
preferable, but Van Halen and his bandmates found the sound too thin:
'You know, single-coil pickups. They had a real buzzy, thin sound unless I
used a fuzz box, and that's even worse' (1980: 75). Van Halen's solution to
these perceived shortcomings was not a dramatic reconfiguration of the
electric guitar, though, but a hybrid object that blended components from
each of the two dominant models in an effort to combine the sound of the
Les Paul with the functionality of the Stratocaster.
At first, this involved the relatively simple procedure of installing a
Gibson humbucker pickup onto a Stratocaster body. But Van Halen
ultimately envisioned a more substantial revision of the original object. He
bought a Strat-style carved wood body from the local Charvel guitar
company and filled in the specifications from there. In a 1978 interview,
the guitarist described his main guitar and outlined the principles that went
into its construction:
It is a copy of a Fender Stratocaster.... I bought the body for [US]$50
and the neck for [US]$80, and put in an old Gibson patent-applied-for
pickup that was rewound to my specifications.I like the one-pickup
sound, and I've experimentedwith it a lot. If you put the pickup really
close to the bridge, it soundstrebly;if you put it too far forward,you get
a sound that isn't good for rhythm.I like it towardsthe back - it givesthe
sound a little sharperedge and bite. .... There is only one volume knobthat's all there is to it. I don't use any fancy tone knobs ... give me one
knob and that'sit. It's simple and it sounds cool ...
Nobody taught me how to do guitarwork;I learnedby trial and error.
I have messed up a lot of good guitarsthat way,but now I knowwhat I'm
doing, and I can do whateverI want to get them the way I want them.
I hate store-bought,off-the-rackguitars.They don't do what I want them
to do, which is kick ass and scream.(Obrecht, 1978: 29, 58)
Van Halen's account highlights some of the many variables that can be
adjusted to alter an electric guitar's properties. He not only uses a particular pickup - an old Gibson humbucker - but has the wiring of the pickup
rewound to match his preference."17
The placement of the pickup on the
body of the instrument is also of key importance, as it has much to do with
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the tonal properties of the resulting sound. Eschewing the multiple pickup
design that is standard on commercial electric guitars, Van Halen was able
to place his single pickup in just the right spot relative to his desired
effect.
Above all, the design principles articulated here - the single pickup,
the single volume knob with no accompanying tone knob - bespeak a wish
to minimize rather than maximize options. Whereas 'off-the-rack' guitars
were meant to cater to players who would approach the instrument from a
potentially wide array of musical backgrounds, and would apply a wide
array of styles, Van Halen sought to build a guitar that fitted his style.
Tinkering with the instrument, then, allowed Van Halen to do more than
construct a guitar that played in a manner he found satisfying. It also
allowed him to mark out his guitar as his creation in a way that paralleled
the playing style and techniques for which he was so celebrated; and to
assert his independence of choice against the more fixed range of consumer
options for which most guitarists settled.
It is worth emphasizing in this connection that one of Eddie Van
Halen's principal motivations behind customizing his electric guitars has
been a search for an individual sound. As he makes plain in his remarks
given earlier, much of his experimentation - with pickup placement, with
the volume knob - has been oriented towards finding the right sound, a
sound that can 'kick ass and scream'. Over his career that sound has come
to be known as 'the brown sound'; and as much as his technical achievements with two-handed tapping and his use of the tremolo bar, the brown
sound has stood for fans and critics, as well as for the guitarist himself, as
a major marker of Van Halen's identifiable brand of virtuosity. The brown
sound is, at root, a refinement of the high-volume, distortion-laden electric
guitar sound that is one of the definitive musical features of hard rock and
heavy metal. Why is the sound 'brown'? Van Halen has never fully explained this point, but brown in this context would seem to connote a sort
of organic quality that offsets the technological underpinnings of the
sound. The guitarist once noted: 'It's tone. It's wood, as opposed to
cinderblock. .... Imagine someone hitting a piece of wood as opposed to
metal or cement. It develops a tone that is pleasing to the ear' (Young,
1984: 56). Van Halen further connects the brown sound to a certain
trained ability to hear an electric guitar: 'there is a difference between being
just loud and having what I call a warm, brown sound - which is a rich,
toney sound. I guess a lot of people are tone deaf and can't figure it out
because they just crank it up with a lot of treble just for the sake of being
loud' (Obrecht, 1980: 93). Not that Van Halen was averse to just cranking
the volume - he was known to have applied an item called a Variac
autotransformer to his amplifiers to supercharge their output.'" But the
brown sound is premised upon the notion that volume and distortion are
not sufficient. The brown sound is Edward Van Halen's sound, a mark of
his distinctive approach to music and the ultimate goal underlying his
reconstruction of electric guitar design.
688
As such, the brown sound is an example of the personalization of

'sound' that Paul Theberge has identified as a core feature of contemporary
popular music practice (Theberge, 1997: 191). This tendency took hold in
a number of venues during the latter part of the 20th century. Susan
Schmidt Horning (2004) in her contribution to the present issue shows
that recording engineers worked to inflect their use of items like the
microphone with forms of tacit knowledge that placed a personal stamp on
the resulting sound. Indeed, recording studios have often been considered
to have signature sounds; records produced at Sun studio in Memphis
(TN), Motown in Detroit (IL), or RCA's studio B in Nashville (TN), are
considered to bear the trace of a unique combination of spatial detail,
technological specification, and the contribution of a distinctive core of
studio musicians."1 Yet with musical instruments, the personalization of
sound is more strictly individualized, particularly when attached to figures
like Van Halen who are already noted for their singular musical capabilities.
Instruments themselves, conversely, have been significantly shaped by the
efforts of individual musicians to use them against the grain of their stock
design. Along with the synthesizer, the electric guitar has arguably been the
instrument to most encourage such efforts. Trevor Pinch and Frank
Trocco's insight about the Minimoog synthesizer can be applied as well to
the electric guitar as it has been used by Van Halen and other tinkering
musicians: 'All the best instruments in some sense do not "work" as they
are supposed to. It is the departures from theoretical models of instruments - the unexpected resonances and the like - that make an instrument
particularly valued' (Pinch & Trocco, 2002: 223). Like Les Paul, Van
Halen put an unusual amount of energy into locating those unexpected
resonances and modifying his instruments to best take advantage of
them.
The intensive emphasis upon individualization evident in Van Halen's
tinkering efforts corresponds closely to ways in which the guitarist understood his mastery of musical technique. Discussing the influence he
wielded upon other musicians, Van Halen complained: 'I guess they always
say that imitation is the highest form of flattery. I think this is a crock of
shit. .... Like I learned a lot from Clapton, Page, Hendrix, Beck - but I
don't play like them. I innovated; I learned from them and did my own
thing out of it' (Obrecht, 1980: 99). Such conviction concerning the value
of innovation and originality, and such pursuit of an almost sovereign
brand of singularity, have been central to the cultural construction of the
electric guitar as a masculine tool. The term 'technophallus' - a term I
coined in association with such figures as Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page refers to the ways in which virtuosity and technology have fused together in
the sphere of electric guitar performance to enhance the aura of masculine
achievement (Waksman, 1999: 188, 246-47). Tinkering has not been
necessary for the musical construction of masculinity to which the electric
guitar has given rise, but like the more specifically musical brand of
technique it has figured prominently as a strategy whereby knowledge,
skill, and expertise regarding the instrument have been construed in
689
relatively exclusive terms. Thus do the words of feminist music writer

Susan Hiwatt, written in the early 1970s, still ring with considerable truth:
'It blew my mind the first time I heard about a woman playing an electric
guitar. Partly because of the whole idea we have that women can't
understand anything about electronics ... and also because women are
supposed to be composed, gentle, play soft songs' (Hiwatt, 1971: 143). It
is in relation to such associations that Van Halen's desire to 'kick ass and
scream' can be understood not only as a determined wish to mark his own
sonic territory but as a means of asserting manhood through the combined
forms of sound and technology.
Greg Ginn took to the guitar somewhat late. By his own account, he only
got into music at the age of 18 years, having earlier been drawn to
electronics - particularly ham radio - and poetry. Unlike Eddie Van Halen,
who undertook several years of classical piano lessons before starting to
play the guitar, Ginn came to the guitar at 19 years old with no previous
musical experience. At the time, he most concentrated upon playing blues,
although his listening tastes included much of the heavier rock of the era
(early 1970s), bands such as the MC5, Stooges, Black Oak Arkansas, Ted
Nugent, and others. Describing his earliest guitar playing efforts, Ginn
remembered: 'I would play along with records but I didn't learn the songs,
I just jammed with the rhythm section. I learned technique by doing it. I
would absorb stuff but I would never consciously study other people.
Playing guitar was about having fun and writing songs. It was intensely
personal' (Sinker, 2001: 79).
In interviews, Ginn regularly credited this manner of learning the
guitar - responding to the sounds he heard on records, but not trying to
reproduce the notes - for the distinctive contours of his style. The four
songs of Black Flag's first 7-inch single record in 1978 find Ginn playing
fast buzzsaw-style barre chords in the manner of prototypical punk guitarist Johnny Ramone, but by the time the Jealous Again extended play record
(EP) was released in 1980, Ginn's guitar attack was more fully in place.20
That record's title track features the guitarist playing off-kilter Chuck
Berry-like fills that set the pace for a mid-song solo that begins in a similar
Berry-derived vein but quickly shifts into less strictly tonal terrain. Ginn's
staccato picking generates a blur of indistinctly struck notes that mutates
into a descending scale that follows a decidedly non-pentatonic logic. The
solo ends with a sliding set of double-stops that careen down the fretboard,
leading back into the verse. Eschewing the more studied virtuosity of
contemporary rock guitarists like Van Halen, Ginn also departed from the
self-conscious simplicity that marked so much punk and hardcore, forging
a guitar style that blended the pounding rhythmic fundamentals of punk
guitar with an approach to soloing that was clearly grounded in rock but
made use of dissonance to a degree that bespoke a less populist aesthetic.
Perhaps because he came to the guitar late, Ginn's interest in electronics never intersected with his guitar playing to the degree that it did for Van
Halen. Yet Ginn's choice of guitar was in its own way as iconoclastic as was
690
Van Halen's work at building his own instruments. As Van Halen characterized his tinkering in terms of trying to escape the 'cliched' presence of
Les Paul and Stratocaster guitars in rock, so did Ginn play for most of his
career with Black Flag a guitar that was in some ways the antithesis of
those 'classic' guitar designs, a Dan Armstrong Ampeg model. Armstrong
guitars were first issued in 1969, built from bodies constructed not from
the usual wood but from see-through plastic, a substance that was used to
increase the sustain of the instruments (Wheeler, 1992: 6-7). The unnaturalistic design was complemented by other unique features such as an
extended 24-fret neck and, most unusual, a set of interchangeable pickups
that could be removed from the body, allowing the guitarist to modify the
sonoric and electronic features of the guitar with minimal effort. This
feature made the Armstrong guitar into something like the electric guitar
equivalent to a radio or television kit, the flexibility of design allowing
guitarists to tinker with different technical options without having to
disassemble the instrument.
Although tinkering with the guitar was not Ginn's main preoccupation, he did make some modifications to the Armstrong, using different
pickups than those provided with the instrument and rewiring the guitar in
order to bypass the tone and volume controls. This latter change presents
an especially intriguing parallel to Van Halen's desire to reduce and
simplify the knob controls on his self-built guitars, limiting himself to a
single volume knob. Both seem to have wanted a guitar that was less valued
for its variability of tonal shadings than for its ability to play loudly with
maximum force. Regarding Ginn, this impulse was described by Black
Flag singer Henry Rollins, who recalled about his first rehearsal with the
group:
They handed me a mic[rophone]and said, 'What song do you want to
play?'... I said 'Police Story' which startswith Ginn, and that feedback.
He had no volume settingon his guitar,just an on/off switch.That's how
the guy is - either asleep or all over you like a cheap suit. Wheneverhe
turned the switchon, it'd feed back. If you hear those earlyFlag records,
every time a song would begin you'd hear that screechbecause that was
him turninghis guitaron. (Blush, 2001: 60)
Ginn never had a sound ideal as defined as Van Halen's 'brown sound', but
it is clear from Rollins' account that the guitarist's approach to sound,
pushing volume and distortion to an extreme so that the spillover of
feedback became an essential part of the music, was an integral counterpart to his angular and aggressive manner of playing. Rollins also provides
the best description of the bodily motions that went along with Ginn's
charged playing style, noting that during the sessions for the band's first
full-length album, Damaged, 'it was amazing to watch Ginn in the studio.
He was relentless - so much energy. He would tape the headphones to his
head for overdubs so they wouldn't fly off' (Rollins, 1994: 21). Such
pronounced physicality paralleled the response of audiences to the music
of Black Flag during their live performances, which were key events in the
formation of the new style of audience interaction known as slam dancing.
691
Black Flag concerts were notoriously physical affairs, and the band was
routinely interrogated and scrutinized for its unwillingness to exert control
over crowd behaviour.21Yet Rollins' portrait of Ginn in the studio, away
from the audience, indicates the extent to which the physical and sonic
excess that characterized the guitarist's approach was as much a selfdirected matter as a means of energizing a crowd. Ginn therefore emphasized in his playing, not only a sound ideal, a way of hearing, but a way of
feeling sound, of maximizing its impact upon the body; an effect that for
him was best achieved by the extreme use of amplification.
Many commentators have observed that, in its resistance to established
notions of virtuosity in rock, punk went some way towards undoing many
of the hierarchies that had been upheld through the music, including
hierarchies of gender. If virtuosity has long functioned as a means of
fortifying musical manhood, then the rejection or redefinition of virtuosity
might work to open a greater space for female participation. Much evidence exists that the initial phase of punk that took shape in the late 1970s
did have this effect, at least to a limited degree. However, the move to
hardcore that Greg Ginn and Black Flag did so much to initiate was less
inclusive regarding matters of gender. The change was due not to the
reassertion of technical expertise but to the aggressively masculine character of the music and audience response. Many of those interviewed in
Brendan Mullen and Marc Spitz's oral history of Los Angeles punk, WeGot
the Neutron Bomb, recalled the extent to which hardcore 'became more a
macho testosterone overdrive thing', which promoted a scene with less
integration of men and women at shows and especially on the dance floor,
where the slam dance 'pit' would form (Mullen & Spitz, 2001: 223).
Ginn's technologically based search for a physically intense sound was no
doubt informed by the increasingly masculinized tendencies of hardcore. If
he never expressly characterized manhood as a goal or a source of his
endeavors, his unwillingness to exert control over the violent elements of
his audience nonetheless allowed a more gender-exclusive environment to
take hold. Stressing the capacity of Black Flag's fans to think for themselves, Ginn's DIY ethos in this instance promoted the elevation of
personal over social responsibility in a way that left discrepancies of power
unresolved.
As much as masculinity was at issue in the work of Ginn and Van
Halen, one should not underestimate the more fundamental importance of
sound as such to their endeavors. In this connection, the preoccupation
with sound they exhibited perhaps finds its closest parallel in the broader
sphere of tinkering and technological consumerism amongst the community of audiophile listeners portrayed by Joseph O'Connell (1992), and by
Marc Perlman (2004) in the present issue. Like these guitarists, audiophile
consumers base their decisions about which stereo equipment to purchase
upon a certain antipathy towards mass-market equipment (O'Connell,
1992: 4). Although tinkering is not inherent to audiophilia, Perlman
(2004) demonstrates the prevalence of technological 'tweaking' as a means
of customizing one's equipment. Like the tinkering pursued by Van Halen
692
and, to a lesser extent, Ginn, tweaking among audiophiles is most oriented

towards the optimization of sound, a goal that non-tinkering audiophiles
pursue through the careful matching of well-built components. Of course
there are key differences in these modes of technological engagement.
Whereas audiophile consumers seek to maximize sound quality in the
sphere of playback, so that they can better listen to music made by others,
Van Halen and Ginn concentrate upon a sound that is 'theirs' in a more
fundamental way, shaped as it is by their musicianship. Nonetheless, the
example of audiophiles alongside that of guitar tinkerers allows us to note
that the effort to achieve a desired sound through technological consumption and customization is an endeavor that cuts across different spheres of
tinkering activity, and that is shared on some level among musicians and
non-musicians.
Solid State
Tinkering, in its various guises, can assume a number of distinct relationships to the 'official' sector of technological manufacturing and production. Although tinkering itself is typically carried out in informal settings,
most notably the home, tinkerers have at times played a significant role in
the creation of broadly successful items, and have even contributed to the
formation of new technology industries. Yuzo Takahashi's (2000) study of
electronics tinkering in post-World War II Japan offers evidence of this
latter course. According to Takahashi, tinkerers in the realms of both radio
and television played two crucial functions in the formation of a home
electronics market in Japan: they produced lower-cost products during a
time when radios and television sets were priced beyond the means of
ordinary citizens, and thus helped to create a broad-based consumer
market for these items; and they constituted a population of technicians
who ensured that people who purchased radio or television sets were able
to get them repaired, which heightened consumer confidence in these
goods. The innovations of Les Paul and Leo Fender had a comparable
influence upon the US market. Following the advent of the solid-body
design, the electric guitar market boomed dramatically, effectively creating
a new sector of the musical instrument industry in a way that earlier
electric guitar models had not.22
Connected by their work on the solid-body, Paul and Fender also
provide a useful study in contrasts relative to their positions in the guitar
industry. Even after the success of his namesake Gibson guitar, Paul
maintained a course of independent tinkering and invention. He reaped
financial reward from having a signature instrument, but never entered
into the commercial production of instruments in his own right. Fender,
by comparison, applied his entrepreneurial spirit toward creating one of
the major guitar manufacturing companies of the second half of the 20th
century. Tinkering for him, then, became a path towards self-incorporation
in the broader business of the electric guitar. Eddie Van Halen and Greg
Ginn, in turn, offer similar contrasts. Van Halen's path was in line with that
693
of Paul, as his tinkering endeavors eventually led to the creation of a valued

signature guitar, created in alliance with an established guitar company.
For Ginn, it was his radio tinkering that ultimately had the greatest
economic importance, and led him toward a form of small-scale entrepreneurship that was crucial to the broader enterprise of hardcore punk.
Eddie Van Halen cast his tinkering as a form of resistance to the pre-set
options of existing electric guitar design. However, his career as an influential guitar virtuoso ensured that his tinkering efforts did not remain
isolated acts. Van Halen's cut-and-paste approach to guitar construction
laid the groundwork for a new aesthetic of electric guitar design that had a
considerable impact upon the guitar industry in subsequent years. British
guitar historian Paul Trynka, for one, has noted the influence of Van
Halen's desire to combine the best features of Gibson and Fender instruments: 'In essence, Van Halen popularized the concept of the "superstrat",
building up his own design from Boogie Body, Fender and Charvel parts'
(Trynka, 1995: 104). Throughout the 1980s, a host of upstart guitar
companies such as Jackson/Charvel, Aria, Kramer, and Ibanez turned this
'superstrat' design into the staple of their production lines, and such
guitars became widely used among hard rock and heavy metal players.
Kramer guitars, which featured a newly patented Floyd Rose tremolo
device, became the best-selling models in the USA during the 1980s, not
least due to the endorsement of Eddie Van Halen.
In 1991, Van Halen pushed this process one step further by striking a
deal with the Music Man company to produce a guitar carrying his
signature line of approval. The Music Man Eddie Van Halen model was a
modification of the 'superstrat' guitar style that the guitarist had been
working with for years. Whereas with the Kramer company Van Halen had
endorsed a guitar that was modeled after his homemade design experiments but produced without his direct input, with Music Man he had a
considerable say over the details of the instrument. As journalist Dan
Amrich noted, 'For a tinkerer like Eddie, creating a production instrument
represented the ultimate thrill' (Guitar World,1997: 6). It also represented
a way to standardize details that he had previously had to obtain through
personal effort, and to reap further financial reward. When interviewed
about his new guitar, Van Halen went to great pains to assert that it was
still effectively his instrument: 'I wanted it like, if my main guitar gets
ripped off and I have to go to the store and borrow one, it will be identical'
(Wheeler, 1991: 89). That Van Halen had displaced his former disdain for
'off-the-rack' guitars with a desire to have his own guitar take its rightful
place 'on the rack' can be taken as a ready indication of the growth in
power and prestige that he had experienced over his career.Yet the guitarist
also asserted that the goal of his collaboration with Music Man was not
sheer mass production; he was attracted to the company in part because
they envisioned making only about a thousand instruments per year
'instead of like other companies that make 25,000 in a month' (Obrecht,
1991: 70). The scale of production gave Van Halen a feeling that he would
694
be able to exert a high measure of quality control: 'That way each guitar
will be exactly the way I want it'. More importantly, though, it meant he
could enter the field of mass production while still maintaining an aura of
personal identification with his namesake instrument.
When Edward Van Halen transferred his signature line from Music
Man to Peavey in 1995, it was because the former company couldn't
produce enough guitars to keep up with consumer demand. Prospective
buyers were kept on waiting lists for the Music Man Eddie Van Halen
model that were anywhere from 10- to 18-months long (Guitar World,
1997: 146). Peavey were a larger company that could meet demand for the
instrument while still upholding the quality; moreover, they were already
involved in producing a line of Edward Van Halen 5150 amplifiers, named
after the guitarist's home recording studio. Whatever his motives for
making the switch - and Van Halen insists that money was less at issue than
his concern with the kids who wanted to buy a guitar that bore his name the move to Peavey marked another step in the consolidation of the process
whereby Van Halen's combined status as virtuoso and tinkerer assumed
significant commodity value for selling of electric guitars. An intriguing
shift in the name of Van Halen's signature guitars also occurred in the shift
of companies, from the Music Man Eddie Van Halen to the Peavey
Wolfgang. The latter guitar was named afterVan Halen's young son, who in
turn was named after none other than Mozart. Christening his new guitar
Wolfgang thus allowed Van Halen to connect the latest offspring of his
tinkering efforts to a long tradition of high musical achievement and to a
new stage in his own manhood, joining high art, mass production and
masculine virility in a new if uneven synthesis.
Regarding technology, Greg Ginn's principal passion was not for the
electric guitar but for ham radio. Like Les Paul and Leo Fender, Ginn had
taken to amateur radio at an early age while growing up in Hermosa
Beach, a suburban community to the south of Los Angeles. According to
Steven Blush (2001), Ginn began tinkering with radio parts as a young
boy, and earned a number of patents for his labors, most notably for an
antenna tuner (2001: 52). At 13 years old, he began to publish a magazine
for amateur ham radio operators called The Novice. Around the same time,
he started SST, which in its initial incarnation was known as SST Electronics, a distributor of equipment for radio amateurs. The letters of the
company's name stood for 'solid-state transmitters', items that were instrumental to Ginn's radio tinkering.
Ginn's initial move towards a sort of DIY activity, then, did not arise
out of some act of rebellion against the music industry, but rather followed
from a long-standing pattern of suburban male engagement with technology. Moreover, it was from his role as the head of SST Electronics that
Ginn became a leading figure within the suburban wing of Southern
California punk. As Jeff McDonald, a member of the band Redd Kross,
recalled: 'Greg Ginn was really into getting a scene going outside of
Hollywood, and he was there for anyone who needed help - he was an
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adult with a job, and he had money, which he made from his own
electronics company' (Mullen & Spitz, 2001: 196). At a moment when
almost no bands on the scene were able to make money from touring and
recording, SST Electronics provided employment for a number of local
musicians, and Ginn was also able to acquire equipment which he would
loan out to other aspiring groups. In this regard, Ginn's development of
SST Electronics followed a set of values similar to that described by Susan
Douglas in her assessment of ham radio, values that seek 'to cultivate the
right balance in masculine culture between rugged, competitive individualism and cooperative, mutually beneficial teamwork' (Douglas, 1999:
334).
The conversion of SST Electronics to SST Records happened in 1978.
Black Flag had signed a deal with established Southern California independent record label Bomp, but business problems prevented the label
from releasing the band's first single as had been planned. Ginn
observed:
We kept waiting and waitingfor Bomp. Finally I decided to release [the
single] myself, and that's where SST Records started. From SST Electronics, obviouslyI knew how to set up a business. But I wasn't looking
forwardto puttingout recordsmyself, because I felt that I had my hands
full betweenworkingmy businessand tryingto play. So it was kind of by
default:'I can do this, so I'll do it'.23
Despite his initial reluctance, Ginn continued to use SST to release Black
Flag's records following that initial single, and also extended the label's
reach in subsequent years to include a wide range of other bands. Ginn
and founding Black Flag bassist Chuck Dukowski managed all the label's
business affairs while hiring a range of other local musicians to assist with
the work of getting out the label's recordings. By the mid-1980s, SST was
likely the leading independent record label in the USA, with a roster that
included at one time or another the Minutemen, Hiisker Dii, the Meat
Puppets, Sonic Youth, and Dinosaur Jr, as well as many other groups that
occupied a unique space in the rock music of the decade.24 Just as
important as the musical output of the label was the process of releasing
records followed by SST, a process marked by a refusal to form partnerships with larger, more established labels. Mike Watt, bassist with the
Minutemen, connected Ginn's manner of operating to his earlier (and
persisting) enthusiasm for amateur radio: 'Maybe it was Greg's experience
with ham radios, but he believed that if you try, you can get things beyond
your little group. He said, "Fuck it, let's sell records, let's go on tour. Let's
make the rowdiest music. Let's not make mersh [commercial] records.
Let's not hide this as a secret. Let's get out and play"' (Blush, 2001: 53).
As radio had served as a technological frame for an earlier generation of
guitar designers, so did it function for Ginn as an entrepreneurial model
geared towards circumventing the economy of scale that had developed
around rock music during the 1970s.
In his recent opus on US independent rock, Our Band Could Be Your
Life, Michael Azerrad states that what bound together groups such as Black
696
Flag and the Minutemen, Hiisker Dii and Minor Threat, the Butthole
Surfers and Dinosaur Jr, was less a common musical style than a common
ethos. 'The key principle of American indie rock ... was the punk ethos of
DIY, or do-it-yourself', claims Azerrad, who continues, 'The equation was
simple: If punk was rebellious and DIY was rebellious, then doing it
yourself was punk' (Azerrad, 2001: 6). Steven Blush, in the first booklength account of hardcore punk, similarly accords DIY a place of prominence in distinguishing his subject from earlier variants of punk: 'Punk gave
lip-service to "Do It Yourself" (D.I.Y.) and democratization of the Rock
scene, but Hardcore transcended all commercial and corporate concerns'
(Blush, 2001: 275). In staking a claim to DIY, neither author acknowledges the history of the term, a gesture characteristic of the amnesia that
has informed the punk appropriation of DIY as a term of resistance to
dominant music industry practice. Whether the punk version of DIY truly
involves the transcendence of corporate concern is debatable in itself. Yet
the foregoing should make it clear that at the very least, DIY as it was
practiced by Greg Ginn was by no means exclusively rooted in punk's
politics of rebellion and confrontation.25 Rather, Ginn's pursuits were
clearly grounded in a form of technological enthusiasm similar to that
followed by young males throughout the 20th century, wherein radio in
particular has served as a device for extending the boundaries of suburban
masculinity through the medium of sound.
Building Technique
The political definitionof skill, like class and gender, is alwaysdynamic
and relative.(Cockburn,1983: 132)
Writing about the history of sound reproduction, Jonathan Sterne recently
noted the important interrelationship between technology and technique.
According to Sterne, technique is a crucial term to any study of technology, a term that 'connotes a connection among practice, technology, and
instrumental reason, ... Technique brings mechanics to bear upon spontaneity' (Sterne, 2003: 92). When technique is discussed with regard to the
electric guitar, it is typically associated with the act of playing the instrument. Speed and precision in the playing of notes receive the greatest
attention, while resourcefulness or inventiveness in achieving unusual
effects occupies a parallel sphere of importance. Some combination of
these qualities makes up the classification of the virtuoso guitarist, a figure
of uncommon technical mastery. Yet the figure of the virtuoso, and the
category of virtuosity, are defined not only by what the virtuoso can do but
by what virtuosity represents. Thus does Robert Walser note in his study of
heavy metal music that 'virtuosity - ultimately derived from the Latin root
vir (man) - has always been concerned with demonstrating and enacting a
particular kind of power and freedom that might be called "potency"'
(Walser, 1993: 76). The masculine bias of technique is embedded in the
very language used, as well as the postures and practices that have defined
the electric guitar as musical instrument and cultural artifact. That this
697
bias is not inherent in the acquisition of guitar technique but rather a

function of its cultural definition does not make it any less powerful as a
means of guarding the sexual boundaries of the instrument and its uses.
In this context, tinkering needs to be considered an ensemble of
techniques that have been applied to the electric guitar. Moreover, it is the
set of techniques that most highlights the complex relationship between
the status of the instrument as a music-making device and as a technological item. The most skilled tinkerers are themselves virtuosi of a sort,
having mastered the subtle process of making technological adjustments to
achieve a desired result. With regard to the electric guitar, tinkering efforts
have most often been applied to the pursuit of a particular sound. Indeed,
as I have suggested elsewhere, it is useful to think of a virtuosity of sound grounded in the sorts of sound experiments in which electric guitarists
engaged through much of the 20th century, laying the groundwork for the
subsequent digital 'revolution' in music - as a corollary to the more
commonly recognized virtuosity of notes, grounded in 'well-tempered'
approaches to musicianship (Waksman, 2003: 132). Eddie Van Halen has
combined these two spheres of virtuosity to notable effect, and in the
process became perhaps the most celebrated guitar virtuoso of the late
20th century. Although tinkering conferred a certain down-to-earth quality
upon Van Halen's image, it also added considerably to his mystique as a
guitarist of exceptional skill, a mystique compounded by the 'heroic' ideals
of guitar performance that reside in heavy metal.
Greg Ginn belongs to a musical domain that has placed less priority
upon virtuosity. Not coincidentally, perhaps, his tinkering was not so
directly applied to the guitar as was Van Halen's. Nonetheless, his involvement with radio clearly links him to larger patterns in the instrument's
history. Both guitarists, in turn, are connected to broader trends in the
history of technology wherein technical facility has been associated with
'masculine' virtues of knowledge, power, and self-determination. Ruth
Oldenziel has observed that the enactment of these virtues assumed a
distinctive cast during the 20th century, when technical skill became a way
for men to negotiate their relationship to the growing influence of consumerism. In her study of the Fisher Body Craftsman Guild, an organization
that for almost 40 years trained young men in the values and skills of
engineering craft, Oldenziel claims that the guild was part of a technological world 'where men design systems and women use them; men
engineer bridges and women cross them ... in short, a world in which men
are considered the active producers and women the passive consumers of
technology' (Oldenziel, 2001: 142). The construction of consumerism as a
passive 'feminized' activity placed a burden upon men to demonstrate their
active relationship to objects of consumption.
From this vantage point, Van Halen's stated resistance to 'off the rack'
guitars can be judged in the same light as Ginn's impulse to establish his
own record label. Both acts arise from an impulse to position the male self
as producer rather than consumer. That these acts also had an entrepreneurial dimension suggests that male technical skill, even when used to
698
stage resistance to structures of consumerism, is ultimately tied to the

larger systems of production. Such insights shouldn't allow us to efface the
real differences in scale between the efforts of Van Halen and those of
Ginn. They should remind us, however, that technological tinkering is a
remarkably flexible activity that has had profound, and often unacknowledged, effects upon the uses of the electric guitar and the making of
popular music.
Notes
1. How technology has affected listening is addressed in several of the papers in the
current special issue, most notably in the contributions by Perlman (2004) on the
culture of audiophiles and Horning (2004) on the work of audio engineers. See also
Pinch & Trocco (2002) on the Moog synthesizer. For a fascinating new history of
sound technologies, which places considerable emphasis upon the interplay of listening
and technology, see Sterne (2003).
2. The connection between masculinity and technology has received increasing comment
in recent years. See Oldenziel (1999), Horowitz (2001), Wajcman (1991), and
Cockburn (1983). I have also been influenced by Susan Douglas's (1987, 1999)
analysis of masculinity and technological tinkering in the sphere of radio, which will be
discussed at greater length in ensuing pages.
3. Statements to this effect have been made by many commentators on the guitarist,
though perhaps the most insightful comes from scholar Robert Walser (1993), who
noted that Van Halen's emergence as guitar hero marked the culmination of a process
whereby 'the electric guitar acquired the capabilities of the premier virtuosic
instruments of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: the power and speed of the
organ, the flexibility and nuance of the violin' (1993: 68-69). I have analyzed Van
Halen's status as noted guitar virtuoso in 'Into the Arena: Edward Van Halen and the
Cultural Contradictions of the Guitar Hero' (Waksman, 2001), portions of which have
been adapted for the present paper.
4. For a more detailed consideration of the intersecting paths of these figures, see
Waksman (1999). Another figure worthy of inclusion in this grouping, though one
whose work was based not in California but in Nashville, TN, is Chet Atkins, a
guitarist who blended musical and technological pursuits in a manner very much akin
to Les Paul.
5. My investigation of Van Halen and Ginn in the ensuing pages is drawn from a
combination of published interviews and profiles in popular magazines, and secondary
sources. I have not had occasion to interview either guitarist. My goal is to situate their
work as tinkering guitarists within the broader terms of discourse through which their
careers have been represented; and as such, the reliance on published commentary is a
deliberate methodological choice. Moreover, these sources have been little used by
scholars, with the notable exception of Robert Walser's previously cited work on Van
Halen. Nonetheless, there are certain questions about their respective efforts that are
not fully addressed in the published record, such as when Van Halen began his
tinkering, or the particular technical details of Greg Ginn's radio tinkering. I have
chosen to leave these questions for further research, to be addressed in the larger study
from which this paper is drawn.
6. Two papers from PossibleDreams (Wright, 1992) are particularly useful in elaborating
upon the activities and ideologies associated with technological enthusiasm. Joseph
Corn's (1992) 'Educating the Enthusiast: Print and the Popularization of Technical
Knowledge' explores the role of publications like PopularMechanics in the proliferation
of such attitudes. Meanwhile, Susan Douglas's (1992) 'Audio Outlaws: Radio and
Phonograph Enthusiasts' analyzes the ways in which various stages of music-related
technology have figured into the cultivation of technological enthusiasm. Both pieces
699
lay considerable emphasis upon the male-oriented nature of enthusiasts' activities, a

point on which I will expand in the course of this discussion.
7. Douglas's (1987) earlier work on radio, from which this consideration of amateur radio
is drawn, only covers the period from 1899-1922. However, she has brought her work
on radio up to date in ListeningIn: Radio and the American Imagination (1999). See
especially the chapter, 'Why Ham Radio Matters' (1999: 328-46), in which she details
the efforts of amateur radio operators from the early 20th century up to the 1990s.
8. Fender's earliest solid-body instrument, the Broadcaster (later renamed the Telecaster),
was criticized in some quarters for its plain, workmanlike appearance.
9. In his study of Bakelite, Bijker (1987: 170) similarly argues that scientists who were too
strictly included in what he calls the 'celluloid frame' could not resolve a key problem
in the development of a plastic substance suitable for manufacturing. The chemist who
successfully resolved this dilemma, Baekeland, did so in part because he was able to
draw upon the resources gained from a different frame, that of electrochemical
engineering.
10. The pickup is, essentially, the device that makes an electric guitar 'electric'. It is
constructed from a series of six magnetic poles - one for each string - wrapped in coils
of wire. The poles receive vibration from the strings, and the wire transmits the
vibration to the circuits that convert it into sound. Pickups have been the source of
much experimentation in the history of the electric guitar - they figured significantly in
the efforts of Eddie Van Halen, as we shall see - but there are two basic designs: a
single coil pickup, which features one series of six poles; and a double coil or
'humbucker', which features two sets of six poles each. The distinction between the two
will be explained over the course of this paper.
11. James Kraft (1996: 103) discusses the influx of musicians to Los Angeles during the
1930s, when the city became, in his words, 'oriented toward entertainment'. The trends
he discusses were further intensified after World War II.
12. For a historical account of the rise of the suburbs in the USA, and the dominant
position of California as a site of suburban development in the years surrounding World
War II and thereafter, see Jackson (1985), especially 246-71.
13. Robert Walser's extended analysis of 'Eruption', and of the more general appropriation
of classical music by heavy metal guitarists, remains the best work on the subject. See
Walser (1993: 68-75).
14. The most thorough (though by no means exhaustive) published accounts of the Los
Angeles scene are Mullen & Spitz (2001) and Mullen et al. (2002). Detailed
consideration of Southern California punk is also featured in Azerrad (2001) and Blush
(2001). The recent publication date of all these books suggests the extent to which the
significance of the Southern California scene has been re-evaluated of late.
15. Hardcore's status as punk 'renewal' is far from uncontested. Many critics and
musicians have understood hardcore not to have renewed so much as reduced the
possibilities that inhere in punk. This was especially the case after audience behavior at
punk shows became quite violent, and when audiences became increasingly demanding
of a 'louder faster' version of punk that left little room for variation or subtlety. Black
Flag were caught up in these conflicts, and would become the object of much
controversy as their sound shifted away from the main hardcore style in the mid-1980s.
16. One of the longest running USA publications devoted to popular music, Hit Parader
had changed the focus of its format that year so that it covered hard rock and heavy
metal almost exclusively. Heavy metal in 1982 was in the early phases of a commercial
renascence following its peak and decline in the previous decade, and the magazine's
editors seem to have made a quick decision to jump on the bandwagon. Over the next
several years, Hit Paraderwould be one of the most widely read USA publications
devoted to heavy metal.
17. Much of the sound of a pickup depends upon the tightness and the evenness with
which the wire coils are wrapped around the magnetic poles. Tighter coils allow for
stronger conducting qualities, which in turn create an amplified signal of greater
strength and with a better balance of tonal properties. Older pickups such as the
700
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
Gibson P.A.F. alluded to in Van Halen's description were often wound with thicker wire
than is used in contemporary models, which placed limits upon the density of the coil.
Having a pickup rewound can thus significantly affect the quality of the sound that it
produces. In a separate interview, Van Halen also mentions that after winding his
pickups, he dips them in a particular type of wax to encase them; this cuts down the
vibration of the coil and thus reduces feedback (Obrecht, 1980: 82).
The Variac autotransformer can be used to regulate the voltage of any electrical device
that operates with AC current. Van Halen used the Variac to overload his amplifier at
140 V, which would push the tubes to a point of extreme saturation and generate a tone
with maximum distortion.
Paul Theberge's (2004) paper in this special issue argues that this emphasis upon the
uniqueness of a given studio's sound was challenged by the proliferation of technologies
such as electronic reverb that took a sonic effect that was situated in a specific space
and converted it into something reproducible anywhere.
The contents of both records can be found on the CD compilation, The First FourYears
(Black Flag, 1983), compiled by Ginn.
The issue of violence and audience behavior was the dominant theme in the press
coverage of Black Flag during the band's early years. Shows in the Los Angeles area
were routinely stormed by the police in the late 1970s and early 1980s; although the
evidence is rather clear that the police were waging something of a war on punk and on
Black Flag during these years, it is also clear that punk audiences were incorporating
violence into their styles of dancing and interacting to an unprecedented degree. When
questioned, Ginn deflected any suggestion that Black Flag should try to regulate the
actions of its audience by expressing concern over the power relations between band
and fans: 'We don't want to get on stage and be authority figures. ... We want to get up
on stage and create an atmosphere where people can think for themselves. They're not
always going to do the right thing' (Black Flag, 1987: 61).
If anything, the electronic synthesizer industry was even more built upon the efforts of
tinkerers, as is well demonstrated by Pinch & Trocco (2002). Both of the key early
architects of the synthesizer, Robert Moog and Donald Buchla, began their
technological pursuits as tinkerers; and Moog's initial factory was essentially an
expansion of his own workshop.
Babcock, Jay (2001) 'A 12-Step Program in Self-Reliance: How L.A.'s Hardcore
Pioneers Made It Through Their EarlyYears,' < www.jaybabcock.com/
blackflagweekly.html > (originally published in the L.A. Weekly).
For a more thorough account of SST's output and its importance in the fostering of a
unique 'independent' rock aesthetic in the 1980s, see the three-part history of the label
by Dave Lang in the online music journal, PerfectSound Forever.Lang suggests that
SST 'was almost like the Sun or Chess of its era: nearly every band of its day that went
on to make a splash in the '90s, or at least greatly influenced the music of the '90s, was
at one time on their label'. Lang (1998) 'The SST Records Story, Part 3,' PerfectSound
Forever(July), < www.furious.com/perfect/sst3.html >.
One might note in this regard that punk has hardly been the only province of popular
music to lay claim to a DIY ethos. For instance, Timothy Taylor (2001) observes the
cultivation of DIY on the fringes of the techno scene, where a preference for 'cheap
and old equipment' is tied to a desire to make music technologies as widely available as
possible (2001: 162-64). Meanwhile, Trevor Pinch and Frank Trocco's history of the
Moog synthesizer (2002) is full of anecdotes about the DIY-style pursuits of the many
figures who contributed to analog synthesizer design.
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Steve Waksman is Assistant Professor of Music and American Studies at

Smith College. He is the author of Instruments of Desire: The ElectricGuitar
and the Shaping of Musical Experience, and has published essays on the
guitar and popular music in The Cambridge Companion to the Guitarand
the Encyclopediaof Popular Music of the World. Currently,he is writing a
cultural history of heavy metal and punk rock, tentatively titled The Noise
of Youth:Rethinking Rock through the Metal/Punk Continuum.
Address: Department of Music,Smith College, Northampton, MA 01063,
USA;fax: +1 413 585 3180; email: swaksman@smith.edu

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Social Studies of Science 34/5

categories, so that guitarists who play in markedly different styles have

musicians have sought to carve out a sphere of 'independence' from the

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Gelber, DIY was driven by two simultaneous impulses: the desire to

Although more recent musical variants of DIY activity and philosophy

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Waksman: California Noise

in what was also the most automobile-oriented region of the country.12

Heavy Metal and Hardcore

Social Studies of Science 3415

Waksman: California Noise

punk, and issuing a discordant, distortion-soaked, quick-fire set of songs

Social Studies of Science 34/5

genres at a transitional moment in their respective histories. Whereas metal

Waksman: California Noise

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tremolo bar the direction of change tends to be downwards rather than

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As such, the brown sound is an example of the personalization of

Waksman: California Noise

relatively exclusive terms. Thus do the words of feminist music writer

Social Studies of Science 34/5

Waksman: California Noise

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and, to a lesser extent, Ginn, tweaking among audiophiles is most oriented

of Paul, as his tinkering endeavors eventually led to the creation of a valued

Social Studies of Science 34/5

Waksman: California Noise

Social Studies of Science 34/5

Waksman: California Noise

bias is not inherent in the acquisition of guitar technique but rather a

Social Studies of Science 34/5

stage resistance to structures of consumerism, is ultimately tied to the

Waksman: California Noise

lay considerable emphasis upon the male-oriented nature of enthusiasts' activities, a

Social Studies of Science 34/5

Waksman: California Noise

Systems: New Directionsin the Sociology and History of Technology(Cambridge, MA:

Social Studies of Science 34/5

Steve Waksman is Assistant Professor of Music and American Studies at

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