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Gear Review: Fashion Week Guitarist and Vocalist Joshua Lozano Discuses His High Gain P-90 Guitar Pickups

We recently chatted with Joshua Lozano, guitarist and vocalist for New York-based noise rock/metal band, Fashion Week, about some of the gear he used on Prêt-à-Porter.

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We recently chatted with Joshua Lozano, guitarist and vocalist for New York-based noise rock/metal band, Fashion Week. The group, who mix rock, metal, hardcore, and grunge, into their own blaring sound, originally released their latest album, Prêt-à-Porter, on February 23, 2014. Now, with a vinyl release via Solar Flare Records looming, we talked with Lozano about some of the gear he used to write and record this album!

What piece of gear do you use to obtain your signature sound?
Lozano: One piece of gear? High Gain P-90 pickups, I put them in all my guitars for this band. Not too common with aggressive music guitarists, but I love them.

What about it makes it so important to you?
Lozano: They are super gnarly and bright and scream through all that wash of cymbals and bass players who have more watts, more speakers, and more pedals than I do.

How was this gear used in the recording of you latest album?
Lozano: Recording Prêt​-​à​-​Porter I really almost used a different guitar and amp combination for every song, so i didn’t necessarily use P-90s on every song… my main guitar for that record was my Vintage Tele Deluxe. It has amazing-sounding humbuckers in it, but P-90s for live every time.

How do you recreate your album tones in your live set?
Lozano: We’re not Failure, those guys recreate every tone exactly. We just play the songs loudly and hope we don’t fuck up.

What are the major pros and cons?
Lozano: Pros: gnarly guitar sounds. Cons: single coil hum.

Do you have a backup for this gear? If so, what?
Lozano: Right now i have two guitar with P-90 pickups in them, I keep the spare tuned and ready to go on stage every show. Soon I will have a third… I hope. Variety is the spice of life.

How long have you had it, how do you use it, would you ever change it?
Lozano: I been playing several style of guitars for a long time, but for Fashion Week it’s always been that sound. I could easily see me up and change my mind tomorrow and having to rewire all these guitars… hahaha.

Give us your best “gear goes wrong story.”
Lozano: I go to great lengths to ensure there are as few mishaps as possible at our live show. I would say the greatest mishap was having my favorite guitar stolen, along with our van and all our gear… so we couldn’t finish the tour… pretty big mishap.

Any final thoughts or comments on the gear?
Lozano: I’m sorry I don’t have a lot to say about gear. I used to be super into amps and all kinds of pedals, and could talk for a long time about playing hopscotch on my pedal board, and the best tone I got from whatever amp and guitar combination. But for Fashion Week I just wanted to write simple parts in a pure guitar/amp kind of way, no tricks or effects. Also not trip over too many pedals while I’m trying to sing… so now I just have one pedal: a tuner….

Check out the album ‘Prêt​-​à​-​Porter’ here.

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