A 15" (380 mm) ball-peen hammer.

A ball-peen (also spelled pein and pane^[1]) hammer, also known as a machinist's hammer, is a type of peening hammer used in metalworking. It is distinguished from a point-peen hammer or chisel-peen hammer by having a hemispherical head. Though the process of peening has become rarer in metal fabrication, the ball-peen hammer remains useful for many tasks, such as striking punches and chisels.

Uses[link]

The original function of the hammer was to peen riveted or welded material, which makes it as flexible as the surrounding metal. Today, the ball end of the hammer is used to cut gaskets, expand and shape the free end of copper roves, light rivets, and "set" rivets (which completes the joint).

Variants[link]

A. Ball-peen hammer B. Straight-peen hammer C. Cross-peen hammer

Variants include the straight-peen, diagonal-peen, and cross-peen hammer. These hammers have a wedge-shaped head instead of a ball-shaped head. This wedge shape spreads the metal perpendicular to the edge of the head. The straight-peen hammer has the wedge oriented parallel to the hammer's handle, while the cross-peen hammer's wedge is oriented perpendicular. The diagonal-peen hammer's head, as the name implies, is at a 45° angle from the handle. They are commonly used by blacksmiths during the forging process to deliver blows to a forge or strike other forging tools.

Head materials[link]

Ball-peen hammers have two types of heads: hard-faced and soft-faced. The head of a hard-faced hammer is made of heat treated forged high-carbon steel^[2] or alloy steel; it is harder than the face of a claw hammer.^[3] The soft-faced hammers are made from brass, lead, tightly wound rawhide, or plastic. These hammers usually have replaceable heads or faces, because they will deform, wear out, or break over time. They are used to prevent damage to a striking surface,^[4] and are graded by the weight of the head.

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Benford, Tom (2006), Garage and Workshop Gear Guide, MotorBooks/MBI Publishing Company, ISBN 0-7603-2312-7 .
• Szymborska, Walter (2004), The Big Book of Self-Reliant Living: Advice and Information on Just about Everything You Need to Know to Live on Planet Earth, Globe Pequot, ISBN 1-59228-043-9, http://books.google.com/?id=E0bb14gPCZsC .

Joe Bonamassa
Bonamassa in Manchester, 2010
Background information
Born	(1977-05-08) May 8, 1977 (age 35) New Hartford, New York United States
Genres	Blues rock, hard rock, rock and roll
Occupations	Musician, singer-songwriter
Instruments	Vocals, guitar, theremin
Years active	1989–present
Labels	J&R Adventures, Provogue
Associated acts	Bloodline, Black Country Communion, Beth Hart
Website	Official website
Notable instruments
Gibson Les Paul Gibson ES335 Fender Stratocaster Fender Telecaster Gibson Flying V

Joe Bonamassa (born May 8, 1977) is an American blues rock guitarist and singer. He began his career playing guitar in the band Bloodline, which featured the offspring of several famous musicians (such as Miles Davis, Robby Krieger and Berry Oakley of The Allman Brothers Band)^[1]. He released his first solo album A New Day Yesterday in 2000, and has since released nine more solo studio albums, four live albums and three live DVDs, along with two albums with the band Black Country Communion and one album in collaboration with vocalist Beth Hart^[2]. He tours the world regularly, and has developed a large following in the U.K. especially. His most recent album, Driving Towards The Daylight, reached #2 on the U.K. Top 40 Albums Chart, and he completed an arena tour there in 2012. In 2009 he was the recipient of the Classic Rock Magazine "Breakthrough Artist of the Year" award^[3], and The Guardian said of him: "the 32-year-old from upstate New York has consolidated a reputation as the pre-eminent blues-rock guitarist of his generation"^[4].

Bonamassa has collaborated with numerous artists, including B.B. King, Eric Clapton, Beth Hart, Paul Rodgers, Leslie West, Jon Lord, Vince Gill, Sandi Thom and Glenn Hughes. He also plays with Hughes in Black Country Communion, along with Jason Bonham and Derek Sherinian^[5].

Joe Bonamassa's music contains a mix of several different genres: although it is primarily blues rock, since relocating to Santorini, Greece in 2009 to record the album Black Rock (named after the studios in which it was created), his music has gained eastern influences, with the addition of instruments such as the bouzouki and clarino (for instance, on Black Lung Heartache from Dust Bowl and Athens to Athens from Black Rock ^[6]). He has also covered songs by John Hiatt and Leonard Cohen^[7].

Early life[link]

Bonamassa was born and raised in New Hartford, New York. His parents owned and ran a guitar shop. He is a fourth-generation musician; with a great-grandfather and grandfather who both played trumpet, and a father who plays guitar, Bonamassa credits his parents with fostering an appreciation of music in his life as early as he can remember. When he was a young child, he would listen to his parents' large record collection. He recalls at age 7, sitting with his parents on Saturdays and listening to Guitar Slim, Bonnie Raitt, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, Eric Clapton, and Jethro Tull. Thus, he sees his music as an amalgam of all the various rock and blues he heard as a child.^[8]

He received his first guitar from his father at the age of 4, and by age 7 he was playing Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimi Hendrix tunes note for note. At the age of 11, during a short period of being mentored by Danny Gatton, he learned such styles as country and jazz as well as polka. During this time with Gatton, Bonamassa sat in with Gatton's band whenever they played in New York. He first opened for B. B. King at 12 years of age. At 14, he was invited to attend a Fender guitar event; during that trip to the West Coast he met Berry Oakley, Jr., with whom he founded the group Bloodline, along with Miles Davis' son Erin and Robby Krieger's son Waylon. They released one album which produced two chart singles — "Stone Cold Hearted", and "Dixie Peach." He has since played with Buddy Guy, Foreigner, Robert Cray, Stephen Stills, Joe Cocker, Gregg Allman, Steve Winwood, Paul Jones, Steve Lukather, Ted Nugent, Warren Haynes, Eric Clapton, Derek Trucks, and Jack Bruce.

Influences[link]

Unlike other successful blues-rock guitarists, Bonamassa cited his influences as being British and Irish blues acts, rather than American artists. Within the blues genre, hearing the traditional blues players, as with Guitar Slim, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, and all the traditional American blues players, (with the exception of B.B. King), comparing the music in the United States to the "European" versions of the blues, Bonamassa found the English blues, fostered by the Jeff Beck Group, Eric Clapton and the Irish blues player Rory Gallagher, to be far more interesting to him than the original Delta blues players.^[8] In an interview in Guitarist magazine (issue 265), he cited the three albums that had the biggest influence on his playing: John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton (the Beano album), Rory Gallagher's Irish Tour and Goodbye by Cream. He also stated that Stevie Ray Vaughan's Texas Flood was a big influence at a young age.

Bonamassa performing in Stafford, Texas, 2007

He elaborated further on his influences in his interview:

"You know, my heroes were the Columbine guys – Paul Kossoff, Peter Green, Eric Clapton. There’s so many - there’s Gary Moore, Rory Gallagher – another Irish musician who played the same things, but don’t tell him that. But those guys were my guys – Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page. There’s a certain sophistication to their approach to the blues that I really like, more so than the American blues that I was listening to. B. B. King’s a big influence – he’s probably my biggest traditional influence. I love Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson and T-Bone Walker and stuff like that, but I couldn’t sit down… I was always forcing myself to listen to whole records by them, where I’d rather listen to Humble Pie do "I'm Ready" than Muddy Waters, you know? I think, the English interpretation of the blues just hit me a lot better, you know?"

And in his October 2008 interview with Express & Star:

“When I heard Kossoff playing "Mr. Big" and when I heard Clapton playing "Crossroads" and when I heard Rory Gallagher playing "Cradle Rock", I was like, 'This is way cooler'.... "British blues are my thing. When I heard Rod Stewart and the Jeff Beck Group singing "Let Me Love You", it changed my life. I knew exactly what I wanted to do. Those are my influences".

These influences are evident in his music, but Bonamassa has been influenced by other artists; notable examples include B.B. King, Robert Johnson, Danny Gatton, Eric Johnson, Albert Collins, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Buddy Guy. Bonamassa's style of playing incorporates rock, blues-rock, Delta blues, electric blues, jazz, country - and even prog rock as evidenced by Yes's "Heart of the Sunrise" and the "Würm" section of "Starship Trooper" being regular features of live performances.

Solo career[link]

Bonamassa's solo début, in 2000, was his Top 10 Blues disc A New Day Yesterday, named after the 1969 Jethro Tull classic that Bonamassa makes his own with what allmusic.com called “a jaw-dropping performance”. Produced by the late Tom Dowd, the album featured guest shots by Gregg Allman, Rick Derringer and Leslie West. "Miss You, Hate You" remains a cornerstone of Bonamassa's repertoire, as does "Cradle Rock". Bonamassa followed it up in 2002 with "So, It's Like That", which included "Pain And Sorrow". The album was his first to hit #1 on Billboard's Blues Chart.

Joe Bonamassa performing at the Manchester Apollo, October 2010

In 2003 – designated "Year Of The Blues" by Congress – Bonamassa returned with Blues Deluxe. In the liner notes, Harris Cohen observed that Bonamassa, "never loses touch with the raw emotion that makes the blues what it is." Reviewing "Blues Deluxe", former Creem editor Jaan Uhelszki added, "New York guitar phenom walks tall in the blues tradition…jettisoning fiery riffs inspired by John Lee Hooker, B.B. King, Elmore James, and Albert Collins into the future with furious playing, a hard-rock sensibility, and a grizzled voice that owes a debt to Gregg Allman. Equally inspired by the Delta blues and the mid-'60s British blues boom, the young firebrand … is able to fuse those two schools together, creating edgy blues rock." Had To Cry Today followed in 2004.

In 2006, Bonamassa released his fifth full-length studio album, You & Me. This album also reached #1 on the Billboard Blues Album Chart. For the recording of this album, he enlisted Jason Bonham, while "Your Funeral And My Trial", featured harmonica player L.D. Miller, and the bassist Carmine Rojas. The title of the album was taken from the Django Reinhardt song "Vous et Moi" (1942). The violin introduction of that song inspired Bonamassa to write "Django", the seventh track on the album. Longer live versions would later appear on Live From Nowhere in Particular in 2009, and at the Royal Albert Hall Concert (Live DVD). For this tour, Bonamassa used former Johnny Winter Bassist Mark Epstein and former Kenny Wayne Shepherd drummer Bogie Bowles.

Bonamassa performing on a double necked guitar in Madrid, Spain on June 2, 2009

Sloe Gin was released in August 2007, and spent several weeks at the top of the Billboard Blues Chart. Bonamassa's touring band underwent another change for this album's tour; bassist Carmine Rojas replaced Mark Epstein, and keyboardist Rick Melick was added. Both of the new band members took part in the recordings of You & Me and Sloe Gin, and toured on select dates during promotion of You & Me.

Bonamassa presented his first live show as a DJ on the UK radio station Planet Rock on November 9, 2008, playing tracks from B.B. King, Muddy Waters, Rory Gallagher and Eric Clapton.

In November 2008, Bonamassa announced he would be playing at the Royal Albert Hall in London on May 4, 2009. Tickets for the concert sold out in less than a week. Bonamassa described the event to the Express & Star as "the complete culmination of 20 years of work for me."^{[citation needed]}

At the Royal Albert Hall concert, Bonamassa mentioned that the first song that he learned to play was "Further on Up the Road" and he then introduced Eric Clapton and together they performed the song. Later Bonamassa paid tribute to the Paul Jones Radio Hour on BBC Radio for playing his material on the air, then introduced Paul Jones who played the harmonica on a Sonny Boy Williamson II song, "Your Funeral, My Trial."

In March 2010, Bonamassa released his tenth full-length solo album Black Rock^[9] which debuted at #1 on the Billboard Blues Charts and #38 on the Billboard 200.

In May 2010, Ian Anderson guested at his concert at London's Hammersmith Apollo, and they played "A New Day Yesterday" along with "Locomotive Breath". At the end of 2010, Bowles announced his departure and Tal Bergman took over as touring drummer.

The Bonamassa, Glenn Hughes, Jason Bonham, Derek Sherinian supergroup is now called Black Country Communion. The band were forced to add 'Communion' to their original name Black Country after another band with the same name raised an objection.

In March 2011, Bonamassa released his eleventh full-length solo album, Dust Bowl, followed in September of the same year by a collaboration with Beth Hart called "Don't Explain".

In early 2012, Bonamassa completed the recording of his twelfth studio album. The title was confirmed by Bonamassa in a post on his official Facebook page on March 12 2012 as Driving Towards The Daylight^[10]. Bonamassa debuted the title track during his UK Tour in the same month^[11]

Discography[link]

DVDs[link]

Live at the Rockpalast was released in 2005, and recorded at the Burg Satzvey in Mechernich, Germany.^[12]

A live DVD titled A New Day Yesterday, Live was given away for a short period of time with So, It's Like That. This concert was later re-released as a full CD and DVD.

An instructional DVD, Signature Sounds, Styles and Techniques, was released in 2006.

A live DVD, Joe Bonamassa: Live From Royal Albert Hall was released in September 2009, featuring Eric Clapton as a guest performer.

Bonamassa's performance with pedal-steel guitarist Robert Randolph, Randolph's Family Band and Pino Daniele at the 2010 edition of Crossroads Guitar Festival appears on the Crossroads 2010 DVD. The song they played is Going Down.

A live DVD, "Joe Bonamassa Live from New York Beacon Theatre" was released in 2012.

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Joe Bonamassa

• Official website
• Joe Bonamassa Experience official website
• Joe Bonamassa Official Fan Website
• European Joe Bonamassa Website

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Chris Whitley
Chris Whitley in concert in Belgium, 1998
Background information
Birth name	Christopher Becker Whitley
Born	(1960-08-31)August 31, 1960 Houston, Texas United States
Died	November 20, 2005(2005-11-20) (aged 45) Houston, Texas United States
Genres	Blues rock, Blues, Alternative rock
Occupations	Musician, Songwriter
Instruments	vocals, resonator guitar, guitar, banjo, dobro
Years active	1983–2005
Labels	Columbia, Work, Messenger, Classic, ulfTone, Valley Entertainment, ATO, Legacy, Sony, Red Parlour, Tradition & Moderne
Associated acts	Daniel Lanois, Trixie Whitley
Website	www.chriswhitley.com
Notable instruments
1931 National Style O 1931 National Triolian

Christopher Becker Whitley (August 31, 1960^[1] – November 20, 2005)^[2] was an American blues/rock singer-songwriter and guitarist.

Early life[link]

Whitley was born in Houston, Texas and learned to play guitar when he was fifteen.^[3] His father was an art director and his mother was a sculptor. During his youth he lived in Dallas, Texas, Oklahoma, Connecticut, Mexico and Vermont. His parents "grew up on race radio in the South" and their musical tastes--including Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix--influenced Whitley.^[4]

Career[link]

Whitley playing guitar on stage with Alan Gevaert

During the early 1980s Whitley was busking on the streets of New York City and collaborating with musicians Marc Miller, Arto Lindsay and Michael Beinhorn.^[4][5] He was given a plane ticket to Ghent, Belgium in 1983, and lived there for four years, recording several albums and playing with the bands Kuruki, 2 Belgen, Nacht Und Nebel, Alan Fawn, and A Noh Rodeo.^[6]

In 1988, producer Daniel Lanois heard Whitley perform at the Mondo Cane club in New York City and he helped Whitley obtain a recording contract with Columbia Records. In 1991 two of Whitley's songs charted on the Billboard Mainstream Rock charts: "Big Sky Country" (#36) and "Living with the Law" (#28).^[7]

In 2000, Whitley recorded his album Perfect Day, an album of covers, with Chris Wood (jazz musician) and Billy Martin (percussionist)--both from the jazz trio Medeski, Martin, and Wood--as his backing band. His follow-up album Rocket House (2001) featured guest appearances by Dave Matthews, DJ Logic, and Bruce Hornsby.^[8]

In early 2004, Whitley's song "Breaking Your Fall" from Hotel Vast Horizon (2003) won an Independent Music Awards for Best Folk/Singer-Songwriter Song.^[9] He won again the following year in The 4th Annual Independent Music Awards for Best Blues/R&B Song for "Her Furious Angels" from War Crime Blues (2004).^[10] Whitley was also an inaugural member of The Independent Music Awards' judging panel to support independent artists.^[11] Whitley recorded a collaborative project with Jeff Lang in April 2005 called Dislocation Blues.^[12]

He performed as a featured guest on albums for many musicians including Shawn Colvin, Cassandra Wilson, Rob Wasserman, Johnny Society, Joe Henry, Michael Shrieve, Chocolate Genius, Ely Guerra, Goat, Dave Pirner, Clint Mansell, DJ Logic, Little Jimmy Scott, Mike Watt and Daniel Lanois.^{[citation needed]}

Whitley appeared in the concert film documentary Hellhounds on my Trail - The Afterlife of Robert Johnson, performing Johnson's "Hellhound on My Trail" solo and "Walkin' Blues".^{[citation needed]}

Style and influences[link]

Whitley's style was rooted primarily in the blues but drew on an array of influences.^[2] In 2001, the New York Times described his act as "restless, moving into noise-rock and minimalist jazz evoking Chet Baker and Sonic Youth as much as Robert Johnson".^[13] Whitley himself refused to be classified in one genre as an artist, and dodged radio-friendly pop songs, insisting that he could never sincerely create and perform them.^[2] Whitley played a brand of confessional acoustic and electric blues, mixed with rock. His lyrics often contained overt sexual and religious references and sometimes bordered on the surreal.^{[citation needed]}

He was fond of playing songs by Johnson, Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, James Brown, J.J. Cale, The Clash, Nat King Cole, The Doors, Willie Dixon, The Flaming Lips, Jimi Hendrix, Howlin' Wolf, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Kraftwerk, Gary Numan, The Passions, Prince, The Stooges, and Sonny Boy Williamson II.^[12]

Reception[link]

According to musician Dave Matthews: "I feel more passion for his music than I do for my own. I have a fervent, religious devotion to the magic that Chris Whitley makes"^[14] and Robert Lockwood, Jr. commented "[That] boy...plays like three men."^[15]

A music reviewer at the Detroit Free Press said: "The notable constant has been the quality of craftmanship, and the consistent question of how Whitley's combination of super songs, muscular-but-poetic lyrics, athletic voice and rock-god guitar work hasn't earned him a wider audience" while a writer at Rolling Stone magazine said: "The post-Hendrix explosion of whammybar wankers hasn't produced a single axeman who can compare to Chris Whitley. His eerie, bluesy voice and American gothic tunes frequently draw attention from the fact that he picks like a pissed off Doc Watson jacked through a Marshall stack".^{[citation needed]}

Bruce Springsteen, Bruce Hornsby, Tom Petty, Jacob Golden, Myles Kennedy, Don Henley, Iggy Pop, Alanis Morissette, Sandi Thom, John Mayer, Gavin DeGraw, Joey DeGraw, Roland Chadwick and Keith Richards all count themselves admirers of Whitley's music.^{[16][15][17][18]}

Death[link]

In fall 2005, Whitley canceled his tour due to health issues. His brother, Dan, commented on November 11, 2005 that Whitley was "in a comfortable warm home with hospice care at his disposal". Later that week it was revealed that Whitley was terminally ill with lung cancer. He died on November 20, 2005 in Houston, Texas at the age of 45.^[2][19][14]

Whitley's death received coverage in the Time, the New York Times, National Public Radio and a mention at the 2006 Grammy Awards.^{[citation needed]} After his death, the musician John Mayer said, "[When] Chris Whitley died...with him went a big part of modern American blues music. There aren't many fighters for the cause, and Chris never gave up on his mission. His somewhat prostrated place in pop culture earned him a sidebar of an obituary, but to those who knew his work, it registers as one of the most underappreciated losses in all of music."^[15]

Personal life[link]

Whitley is survived by his brother Dan and his daughter Trixie Whitley, a Belgian musician.^[19]

Equipment[link]

Whitley playing his resonator guitar

Whitley he used various alternate tunings and often played slide guitar on a National resonator guitar and other musical equipment such as:^[20]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

• 1931 National Style O (with Barcus-Berry magnetic Dobro pickups)
• 1931 National Triolian (with Barcus-Berry magnetic Dobro pickups)
• 1936 Gibson L-0 acoustic guitar
• 1956 National Reso-Phonic (with an old Danelectro pickup)
• 1958 Gibson ES-125 (used a lot on Terra Incognita (1997))
• 1967 Gibson Melody Maker (used a lot on Din of Ecstasy (1995))
• 1995 Bart Reiter five-string banjo
• Juice Box tube DI
• Fender Pro Junior amplifier
• Trace Elliot Velocette amplifier
• Dunlop purple flat pick and metal fingerpicks on his ring and middle fingers.
• Slide he made from a piece of bicycle handlebar, which was worn on his little finger and cut so that he could rotate it out of the way for fretting.^[20]
• Boot board amplified with a Fishman upright bass transducer

Discography[link]

• Living with the Law (1991)
• Din of Ecstasy (1995)
• Terra Incognita (1997)
• Dirt Floor (1998)
• Live at Martyrs' (1999/2000)
• Perfect Day featuring Billy Martin and Chris Wood (2000)
• Rocket House (2001)
• Long Way Around: An Anthology: 1991-2001 (2002)
• Pigs Will Fly (soundtrack) with Warner Poland and Kai-Uwe Kohlschmidt (2003)
• Hotel Vast Horizon (2003)
• Weed (2004)
• War Crime Blues (2004)
• Soft Dangerous Shores (2005)
• Reiter In with The Bastard Club (2006)
• Dislocation Blues with Jeff Lang (2006)
• On Air (2008 - recorded live 2003)

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Chris Whitley

• Chris Whitley's Messenger Records Website
• The Chris Whitley Discography

Ernie Ball (c.1930 – September 9, 2004) was an American entrepreneur, musician, and innovator, widely acclaimed as a revolutionary in the development of guitar-related products. He began as a club and local television musician and small business entrepreneur, building an international business in guitars and accessories that would eventually gross US$40 million a year.

Early years[link]

Born Sherwood Roland Ball in Santa Monica, California, USA, “Ernie” Ball grew up in a musical family. His grandfather wrote the standard, When Irish Eyes Are Smiling^[1] and his father was a car salesman who taught Hawaiian steel guitar on the side.^[2] Although Ball initially picked up the steel at age nine to please his father, he became bored and gave it up. In his early teens he began to take a renewed interest in the instrument, practicing as many as three hours a day. Within a year he was a member of the Musicians Union.^[3]

Musician[link]

While still in his early teens, Ball began playing professionally in South Central Los Angeles beer bars. By age 19 he joined the Tommy Duncan Band playing pedal steel guitar. Duncan, the former lead singer with Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, took the band on tour through the Southwestern United States. During the Korean War, he did a tour of duty in the United States Air Force Band, playing guitar and bass drum.^[4] After the military he returned to Los Angeles and continued playing in barrooms and lounges, until landing a job on the 1950s “Western Varieties” program at KTLA television.^[5] The position soon gained him wider recognition in the Los Angeles music scene and led to studio work and teaching jobs.^[6]

Entrepreneur[link]

Sometime in 1957 or 1958, Ball opened what was arguably the first music store in the United States to sell guitars exclusively, in Tarzana, California.^[7] When music sales reps criticized him for refusing to sell drumsticks and other instruments equipment, Ball replied, “I just want to sell guitars.” He was repeatedly told that a guitar store would never be a success, but the words rang hollow as people began to come from miles around to visit the shop.^[8] Eventually, the products spawned from his company would sell in more than 5,500 stores and be exported to more than 70 countries of the world.^[9]

"Slinkys"[link]

With the guitar-based rock revival of the 1960s, Ball noticed that beginning students were having difficulty playing the bestselling Fender #100 medium gauge strings, particularly in holding down or bending the stiff 29-gauge third ("G") string. At the time, it was common for a set of strings to have a "wound" third string. He approached the Fender company with the problem, suggesting a lighter gauge but was rebuffed. Ball convinced a string manufacturer to make him custom sets with a 24-gauge third string which he sold in his store.^[10] It was the beginning of the Ernie Ball brand. Located not far from Hollywood, the store began to attract a large patronage of professional musicians, including The Beach Boys, Merle Travis, and The Ventures. Ball also began to notice the practice of "slack stringing" among players who discarded the bottom sixth string and added a banjo first string on top. This resulted in an overall lighter gauge set with a plain third string. Again, he contacted Fender with a suggestion for a lighter set and was turned down. This time he continued the quest with Gibson who scoffed at the idea. So, once again he ordered from the manufacturer naming the product the Ernie Ball Slinky.^[11] "Slinky" strings traveled the country with the pro musicians who used them and before long, Ball was receiving mail orders from individuals and stores. Still not a string company, he ordered separate strings in various sizes and displayed them in a makeshift case allowing musicians to experiment in creating their own sets. It took off, and in 1967 he sold the store and moved his string business to Newport Beach, California.^[10]

Today Ernie Ball Slinkys are used by many world famous guitar players. A very small sampling of these guitarists includes:Slash, Buckethead, Juan Alderete, DJ Ashba, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Dave Coletta, The Edge, Daniel Wadley, John Fogerty, Charles Gallant, Synyster Gates, Delvin "Chickenscratch" Johnson, Janick Gers, Billy Googs, Buddy Guy, Steve Vai, Tommy Kessler, Kirk Hammett, James Hetfield, Albert Lee, John Mayer, Dave Navarro, Jimmy Page, Brad Paisley, John Petrucci, Omar Rodríguez-López, Mick Thomson, Chris Broderick, Daron Malakian, Angus Young, Christian Chestnut, Dave Murray, Curt Kirkwood, and Paul Gilbert.

Marketing innovation[link]

Ernie Ball did not create anything new—he simply saw a demand and improved upon existing products and found ways to better fulfill market demands.^[10] By the early 1970s he took the company global by establishing distributors in Europe and Asia.^[6] Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Pete Townshend and other rock icons were stringing up Slinkys, a trend that continues into the present, making Ernie Ball the second biggest string manufacturer in the country. He was unorthodox in his management methods, disregarding market surveys, preferring instead to test products in the marketplace to see if they would succeed.^[12] He regarded profit-and-loss as necessary evils and trusted his instincts. In the early eighties the company bought the Music Man Company, expanding into the production of high quality guitars, basses and amplifiers with Leo Fender making the instruments and Tom Walker building amps.^[13] Ball, along with former Fender employee, George Fullerton, was instrumental in the development of the first modern acoustic bass guitar, introduced under the Earthwood brand in 1972. Although unsuccessful, surviving models are highly collectable.^[14] In 1985, the company was moved to a new facility in San Luis Obispo and remained there with all of it operations until early 2003, when the company relocated its string manufacturing to Southern California’s Riverside County. Under his leadership it grossed more than $40 million per annum.^[15] The company established an annual Battle of the Bands contest and participated in other trade events nationwide.^[16]

Battle of the Bands[link]

In 1997, the very first Ernie Ball Battle of the Bands kicked off at the San Francisco Warped Tour. The Battle of The Bands 1 had 18 stops in its first year and developed into a long-lasting relationship with Kevin Lyman and The Warped Tour.^[17]

Personal life[link]

Ball had diverse interests including collecting cars, surfing and flying airplanes. He also authored a series of books and manuals on guitar playing. He was married and had three sons, Sherwood, David, and Sterling Ball, and a daughter, Nova.^[18]

Death[link]

Ball remained active in his company until his death 42 years after its founding. He died from an ongoing, undisclosed illness on September 9, 2004, leaving the business to his sons and other family members. He was buried near his home at San Luis Cemetery in San Luis Obispo, California.^[11]

See also[link]

• Michael DeTemple

References[link]

External links[link]

• Ernie Ball/Music Man Company
• Ernie Ball Battle of the Bands
• Guitar Player story Captured 7 April 2007

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