INTERVIEW: George Lynch on distortion

What better way to celebrate Halloween than with a few words from Mr Scary himself, George Lynch as part of I Heart Guitar's ongoing series on the glory of distortion? The following is a little teaser of my interview with George for the upcoming edition of Mixdown magazine, out next week. A few weeks after that, I’ll post the extended version of the interview here.

PETER: What is your philosophy on distortion?
GEORGE LYNCH: Less is more.

PETER: How do you generate your distortion?
LYNCH: I’m always switching out overdrive pedals. Right now I’m switching between Analog Man King of Tone, Naked OD, Keeley hand-wired point-to-point time machine boost (Lynch Model) and a Cusak Tube Screamer.

PETER: Tell us about the Lynch Box amp with Randall. How does it adapt to your different musical personalities?
LYNCH: Dave Freeman, Bruce Egnator and I worked from the bottom up, designing modules that matched some of my favorite amps: early Boogie Recto's, Marshall Plexis, Vox AC30s, etc.
I started out with Randall in the very early 80's. I worked with Gary Sunds on the RG 100. So I’ve come full circle with them by getting on board again 25 years later. We plan on re-releasing the RG 100 amp in the next couple years. It was a very unique amp with a signature sound, and it was all transistor!

CLICK HERE to buy the Randall MTS Series Lynch Box 100W amp head with modules
CLICK HERE to buy the ESP George Lynch M-1 Tiger electric guitar
CLICK HERE to buy George Lynch: The Lost Anthology on CD

Photo by Gabrielle Geiselman