Samantha Fish has been described as one of the most dynamic young blues guitarists alive, but that description undersells what she actually is: a guitarist who has spent a decade systematically dismantling the assumption that the blues is a preservationist’s museum piece, replacing it with the conviction that the blues is a living language capable of expressing anything a twenty-first century musician needs to express. She plays the white SG through the Category 5 amp the same way the people who shaped her shaped her — with physical authority and emotional directness — but she brings it to funk, to country, to R&B, to psychedelic rock, to whatever the song demands. “Every album so far has just been another layer of something that was inspiring me,” she told Vintage Guitar magazine. “The guitar didn’t go anywhere.”
Samantha Fish was born on January 30, 1989, in Kansas City, Missouri. She began playing guitar at fifteen — not the kind of origin story that involves childhood prodigy moments but the more common story of an adolescent who picks up an instrument and discovers that it is the thing she needs. She began performing in Kansas City blues clubs as a teenager, built a local following through relentless gigging, and released her first album on Ruf Records in 2011. She won Best New Artist at the Blues Music Awards in Memphis in 2012 — a significant peer recognition at twenty-three years old, from the genre’s primary establishment organization. She has released ten studio albums across a decade of professional music-making. She lives in New Orleans.
Her gear story is the story of a working musician who assembled her rig practically and specifically: she was turned on to Category 5 amplifiers by Joe Bonamassa, Warren Haynes, and Tab Benoit — the established blues guitarists who understood that the Kansas City kid needed boutique tube amplification to compete at the level she was already playing. She acquired her cigar box guitar at the King Biscuit Blues Festival in Helena, Arkansas. She got her Delaney signature model through a mentor’s connection. Every piece of gear has a specific origin in specific professional relationships. Nothing is random; nothing is marketing. The rig is the playing life made physical.
Background: Kansas City Blues Clubs, Blues Music Awards, New Orleans Move
Fish’s development as a guitarist was shaped by the same live performance crucible that has shaped every serious American blues musician: endless gigging, playing for audiences who know what good blues sounds like, developing the physical stamina and musical flexibility that only regular performance produces. Kansas City has a specific blues tradition — the Kansas City blues and jazz heritage that runs from Charlie Parker through Count Basie to the contemporary Kansas City blues scene — and Fish absorbed that tradition through proximity and ambition rather than through formal instruction.
Her connection to the broader blues community came through the same live performance and festival network that has always connected American blues musicians. Mike Zito — the guitarist and producer who is one of the most well-connected figures in contemporary blues — introduced her to Mike Delaney, who built her the signature Fishcaster. Zito also gave her the MXR Custom Badass Modified Overdrive pedal as a gift. Category 5 amplifier owner Don Ritter worked with her specifically on a custom Andrew 2×12 configuration. These relationships are the ecosystem through which her rig was assembled and through which her career was built.
Her move to New Orleans — from the Guitar Player profile: “Samantha Fish climbs the steps of her 19th-century New Orleans home, shouldering her Arctic White Gibson SG as she retreats from the midday summer sun into a wide parlor” — reflects the specific gravitational pull that New Orleans exerts on blues musicians who want to be surrounded by the living tradition of American roots music. The city’s specific sonic environment, its cultural density, and its community of working musicians provide the context in which her music has continued to develop through her most productive albums.
Her Faster album (2021) and subsequent work with producer Martin Kierszenbaum represented another evolution: more electronic production elements, more genre synthesis, more willingness to move away from the purely organic blues-rock context of her earlier records. “There’s a depth and loudness and there’s also more presence than my other guitars which don’t have that full bottom sound,” she said of the Gibson Firebird she added to her collection for the Faster period. The willingness to expand her sonic palette — while maintaining the Category 5 amplifier foundation and the Arctic White SG as primary — is characteristic of a musician who treats the blues as a starting point rather than a destination.
The Rig: Samantha Fish’s Guitars, Amps, and Effects
Guitars
Gibson SG Arctic White (Primary Guitar, Career Centerpiece Since ~2015–2018): Samantha Fish’s primary and most visually recognizable instrument is an Arctic White Gibson SG — a fully stock production guitar that she keeps in completely unmodified form: no pickup swaps, no hardware changes, no custom modifications. The SG’s specific character — a mahogany body with its distinctive double-cutaway design, thinner than a Les Paul, lighter (around 7.5 pounds) for two-hour shows, with the specific bright-but-warm character of the humbucking pickups through the SG’s resonant mahogany construction — produces the core of her sound. The Arctic White finish is a specific visual choice: an SG in white reads differently on stage than a tobacco burst or a cherry red, and Fish’s white SG has become as iconic to her visual identity as Marcus King’s red ES-345 is to his.
The fact that she keeps it stock is significant. Many professional guitarists modify their instruments extensively — pickup swaps, nut replacements, fret work, hardware upgrades. Fish’s decision to leave her SG exactly as Gibson built it reflects the same “if it ain’t broke” philosophy she describes in interviews: she found the guitar that felt right, and she kept it exactly as she found it. The SG’s neck-heavy balance (a characteristic SG trait that causes the headstock to dive without a strap) is managed through technique and muscle memory rather than modified out of existence.
Delaney 512 Semi-Hollow with Amalfitano Humbuckers (Slide Guitar, Open D Tuning): The Delaney 512 is “like a 335 but smaller, like a 339” in Fish’s own description, with Amalfitano humbuckers — custom-wound pickups from a respected small-operation builder. She keeps this guitar in open D tuning specifically for slide work: “a semi-hollow 512 with double humbuckers that she keeps in open D for slide,” as the Premier Guitar Rig Rundown documents. Open D tuning (D-A-D-F#-A-D) gives a resonant open D major chord from all six open strings, providing the droning quality and specific interval relationships that make slide guitar harmonically rich and tonally compelling. Fish uses “a variety of open tunings on her songs, but changed the keys of several to D for onstage convenience” — the pragmatism of a touring musician who understands that multiple open tunings onstage complicate the set unnecessarily.
Delaney “Fishcaster” Signature (Semi-Hollow Tele-Thinline Hybrid): After Mike Zito connected Fish with Delaney guitar builder Mike Delaney — with Delaney’s characteristic declaration “I want to make you a signature guitar!” — the result was the Fishcaster: a completely unique design that crosses a Telecaster thinline with a semi-hollow body, featuring a distinctive “fish” f-hole, swamp ash body, maple neck, and rosewood fingerboard. The original pickup configuration included a mini-humbucker and a single-coil, but Fish replaced these with Klein humbuckers for more output and warmth. “You can get some funky feedback notes out of it,” she says. It appears in every studio album she has recorded and serves primarily for slide work alongside the Delaney 512 — “Gone for Good” is one of the documented songs where it gets the most prominent use.
Fender Jaguar (Classic Player and Vintera Models, R&B and Light Material): Fish has used two Fender Jaguars extensively: a Classic Player model and a seafoam green Vintera series model gifted by Fender (currently sold with her autograph). The Jaguar’s specific character — short scale length (24-inch vs. standard 25.5-inch), floating vibrato, dual single-coil pickups — gives a brighter, more articulate sound than the SG’s humbuckers, with the specific twanginess appropriate for lighter material. “I’ve got a Jaguar for light stuff like ‘Hello Stranger'” — the Barbara Lewis R&B song from Chills & Fever — Fish says in her Guitar Player interview. She leaves the vibrato arm off both Jags. Her most recent offset body is a Fender Jazzmaster, acquired in 2022: “I was looking for something similar [to the Jaguar] with a little more grit. It does the job and then some.”
Gibson Firebird (Cardinal Red, 2019 Addition, Faster Period): In 2019, Fish received a Cardinal Red Gibson Firebird from Gibson as a gift. The Firebird’s specific character — a reverse-body mahogany guitar with mini-humbucker pickups, producing a specific “depth and loudness” and “more presence” than Fish’s other guitars — made it the primary instrument for the Faster album. “There’s a depth and loudness and there’s also more presence than my other guitars which don’t have that full bottom sound,” she told Guitar magazine. The Firebird’s mini-humbuckers (reverse-wound single-coil design in a humbucking configuration) produce a specific bright-but-full character that is distinct from either the SG’s full humbuckers or the Jaguar’s single-coils.
Stogie Box Blues Cigar Box Guitar (P-Bass Pickup, Fan Favorite): Fish bought a cigar box guitar built by Stogie Box Blues while performing at the 2012 King Biscuit Blues Festival in Helena, Arkansas — a guitar that she describes as sounding “mean as hell” and that has since become a fan favorite at live shows. The Premier Guitar Rig Rundown describes it precisely: “a P bass pickup and a floating bridge, and has seen a lot of road wear, but still roars like a gargling grizzly bear.” The cigar box guitar — a three- or four-string instrument built in an actual cigar box or cigar-box-sized housing — is one of the foundational instruments of American folk and blues culture, with a specific raw, nasal, harmonically limited but emotionally powerful character that no conventional guitar can approximate. Fish’s use of a cigar box guitar in her live set reflects the same genuine connection to the roots of the blues that runs through every aspect of her playing.
Danelectro Baritone (Documented in 2013 Rig Rundown): A Danelectro baritone guitar — with its longer scale length and lower tuning extending the bass register — appears in Fish’s 2013 Premier Guitar Rig Rundown. The Danelectro brand’s distinctive lipstick-tube single-coil pickups produce a specific nasal, mids-heavy character that Fish found useful for specific slide passages requiring a lower tonal register than a standard guitar provides.
Taylor All-Koa K24ce (Acoustic): Fish’s primary acoustic guitar is an all-koa Taylor K24ce — a Taylor grand auditorium body with koa top, back, and sides (rather than the standard spruce/rosewood or mahogany combination). Koa — the Hawaiian hardwood with its specific warm, complex midrange character — gives the K24ce a distinctive tonal personality: complex, with a specific “open, tropical” sound that sits between the warmth of mahogany and the brightness of maple. She is documented performing an acoustic performance of “Crow Jane” on the K24ce.
Amps
Category 5 Amplifiers (Exclusive Amplification for Over a Decade): Samantha Fish’s amplification has been exclusively Category 5 since around 2012 — a boutique amplifier company from Kansas City (appropriately, her home city) whose Fender-voiced tube amplifiers provide the “monster amp” tone she prefers. She was turned on to Category 5 by blues musicians she admired: Joe Bonamassa, Warren Haynes, and Tab Benoit. “She prefers a ‘monster amp’ tone, and plays mostly on Channel 2,” the Equipboard documentation notes.
Her primary amplifier configuration has two formats for different venue sizes. For larger venues, she runs a Category 5 Camille head (90 watts) through a 4×12 cabinet — a configuration that provides sufficient volume and authority for big stages. For smaller venues and as backup, she uses the Category 5 Andrew 50-watt 2×12 combo — Category 5 owner Don Ritter worked with her specifically on a custom Andrew 2×12 configuration with both 10-inch and 12-inch speakers in the cabinet for a specific frequency blend. The Category 5 Andrew has a matching silver tolex extension cabinet. The amp’s 6V6 power tubes give a specific American-voiced character — cleaner and warmer than European EL34-voiced amps, with the natural breakup character of Fender-style circuit design.
Effects
Analog Man King of Tone (Primary Overdrive): The Analog Man King of Tone is Fish’s primary overdrive — one of the most sought-after and most difficult-to-obtain boutique overdrive pedals, known for its transparent, musical breakup character that pushes an amp into natural saturation without coloring the fundamental tone. She describes it as “sounding awesome.” The King of Tone’s dual-overdrive circuit (two cascaded Tube Screamer-style circuits) provides more tonal range than a single circuit, from light edge-of-breakup to rich, sustaining drive.
MXR Carbon Copy Delay (Primary Delay): The MXR Carbon Copy is Fish’s primary delay pedal — an analog delay based on the bucket-brigade chip delay technology that produces the warm, slightly degrading echo character of tape echo without the mechanical complexity. Its warm, musical repeats suit the blues and roots context of her playing better than the precise, crystal-clear repeats of digital delay. “You can work the knobs against each other, make crazy psychedelic noises, and you can slow the pitch down,” she noted of her love for delay effects.
JHS Mini Foot Fuzz (Fuzz): A JHS Mini Foot Fuzz provides the fuzz texture in her effects chain — JHS Pedals is a Kansas City, Missouri company, making this an appropriately local endorsement for Fish. The Mini Foot Fuzz’s compact format and wide range of fuzz character suits her specific needs: enough fuzz for raw, aggressive passages, but controllable enough not to overwhelm the transparency of the King of Tone and the Category 5’s natural character.
Electro-Harmonix Micro-POG (Octave Generator): The EHX Micro-POG generates one or two additional octaves of the input signal simultaneously, producing the thick, organ-like quality of octave-doubled guitar. Fish uses it for specific textural passages — the POG’s “wild string-bending and ear-catching octave and delay effects” mentioned in the Premier Guitar review of her Kill or Be Kind tour.
Boss PS-5 Super Shifter, JHS Tidewater Tremolo, and Supporting Pedals: Additional pedals documented on Fish’s board include the Boss PS-5 Super Shifter (pitch shifting for harmonized leads), JHS Tidewater Tremolo (for the wobbling tremolo effect essential to certain blues and R&B contexts), Dunlop Volume Pedal, Boss TU-3 Chromatic Tuner, and a Hungry Robot Buffer to clean up the signal chain. The MXR Custom Badass Modified Overdrive — a gift from Mike Zito — is also documented in her rig, alongside the Line 6 DL-4 delay modeler for specific digital delay applications.
D’Addario EXL110 Strings (.010–.046 Gauge): Fish uses D’Addario EXL110 nickel-wound strings — light gauge, the standard choice for blues and rock players who want easy bending without sacrificing too much tone or volume. For slide playing on her Fender Jaguars, she sometimes uses slightly heavier .011–.049 gauge strings for better tension and sustain under the slide.
Playing Style & Tone Philosophy
Samantha Fish’s playing style is the most genre-flexible in contemporary blues guitar — more willing to move between blues, country, funk, R&B, and psychedelic rock than almost any peer, while maintaining a core tonal identity based on the SG-through-Category 5 foundation. Her slide playing is one of the strongest dimensions of her technique — she keeps specific guitars in specific open tunings for performance convenience, reflecting the practical discipline of a guitarist who plays slide regularly enough that the tuning logistics matter. Her open D approach on the Delaney 512 and the Fishcaster produces a specific resonance that suits the swampy, Southern-inflected character of her slide work.
Her tone philosophy is both practical and philosophical. The “monster amp” description of what she wants from the Category 5 reflects a guitarist who needs to fill rooms, compete with drums, and maintain presence across the full dynamics of a live blues performance. The choice to keep the SG stock reflects a guitarist who found the sound she needed in a production guitar and didn’t require the kind of modification that expresses boutique-gear anxiety. “I’ll pick up just about anything, and if it feels true to me, I’ll keep it on the table” — in her words, a philosophy of sonic pragmatism that prioritizes actual feeling over theoretical specification.
Her attitude toward pedals has evolved across her career: “I did away with pedals for years, but now I love using delay. You can work the knobs against each other, make crazy psychedelic noises, and you can slow the pitch down.” This evolution — from pedal minimalism to selective but enthusiastic pedal use — reflects an artist who found in effects a new compositional tool rather than a tonal crutch. The King of Tone, the Carbon Copy, the Micro-POG, and the JHS Fuzz are not insurance against bland playing but instruments in their own right, deployed with the same specificity as the guitar choices.
How to Sound Like Samantha Fish
Guitar: A Gibson SG Standard or an Epiphone SG Standard (for budget-conscious players) provides the authentic starting point. Stock humbuckers in a mahogany SG body through a Fender-voiced tube amp is the core of her sound. For her slide work, a semi-hollow guitar kept in open D tuning — any semi-hollow with dual humbuckers — gets you into the right tonal territory.
Amp: A Fender-voiced tube combo — Deluxe Reverb, Super Reverb, or Vibrolux — provides the American tube character that Category 5’s Fender-influenced design captures. The Fender Blues Junior is the most accessible entry point. Push it into the edge of natural breakup.
Amp Settings (Fender-Voiced Tube Amp):
| Control | Setting (0–10) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Volume | 5–7 | Channel 2 “monster amp” — pushed but not fully saturated |
| Bass | 5–6 | Full — SG mahogany needs bass support |
| Mid | 6–7 | Forward — Fish’s tone is mid-forward and present |
| Treble | 5–6 | Bright but controlled — SG humbuckers provide natural warmth |
| Reverb | 3–5 | Moderate — not dry, not drenched |
Key effects: Analog Man King of Tone (or Boss OD-1 for a budget equivalent) for transparent overdrive. MXR Carbon Copy for warm analog delay. JHS Mini Foot Fuzz or EHX Big Muff for fuzz passages. EHX Micro-POG for octave doubling. Keep the board focused: Fish’s approach is “6–8 pedals total” — enough tools for variety without complexity for its own sake.
Influence & Legacy
Samantha Fish occupies a specific and increasingly important position in contemporary blues: the musician who is demonstrating that the blues in the twenty-first century can be a genre-flexible, multi-directional vehicle for personal expression rather than a historical preservation project. Her willingness to move between country blues (Belle of the West), R&B (Chills & Fever), psychedelic rock (Faster), and acoustic folk reflects the same breadth of interest that has always characterized the most lasting figures in American roots music.
Her impact on the “women in blues” conversation is significant but not sufficient as a characterization. She is not important because she is a woman in a male-dominated genre — she is important because she is exceptionally good at her instrument, and the fact that she is a woman is one biographical fact among many. The Blues Music Award Best New Artist recognition in 2012 was peer assessment from the blues establishment, not quota fulfillment. The consistent quality of her live performance — the “wild string-bending,” the “large tonal vocabulary,” the dynamic range from intimate acoustic to full-band electric — is assessed by audiences and critics who respond to the music rather than the biography.
Her contemporaries Marcus King (Series 2 #132), Joanne Shaw Taylor (Series 2 #134), and Eric Gales (Series 2 #135) collectively represent the generation of blues guitarists who are taking the tradition forward without abandoning its roots. Warren Haynes (Series 1), Joe Bonamassa (Series 1), and Tab Benoit — the established figures who pointed her toward Category 5 amps and whose peer recognition launched her career — represent the tradition she is extending. The Arctic White SG and the Category 5 Andrew are the instruments through which that extension is happening.
Internal Links:
- Marcus King, Fish’s contemporary in the new generation of American blues guitar at #132
- Joanne Shaw Taylor, another of Fish’s peer-generation blues guitarists at #134
- Warren Haynes, who was one of the established players who pointed Fish toward Category 5 amps (Series 1)
- Joe Bonamassa, another established blues guitarist who recommended Category 5 to Fish (Series 1)
Frequently Asked Questions: Samantha Fish Guitars & Gear
What guitar does Samantha Fish play?
Samantha Fish’s primary guitar is an Arctic White Gibson SG Standard — a fully stock production guitar with no modifications. She has played this guitar as her main instrument since approximately 2015–2018. She also uses Delaney semi-hollow guitars (the Delaney 512 and her signature “Fishcaster”), Fender Jaguars (Classic Player and Vintera models) for lighter R&B material, a Gibson Firebird (Cardinal Red, received in 2019) for the Faster album, a Stogie Box Blues cigar box guitar as a live fan favorite, a Danelectro baritone for specific tonal needs, and an all-koa Taylor K24ce acoustic.
What amp does Samantha Fish use?
Fish uses Category 5 Amplifiers exclusively — a boutique Kansas City tube amplifier company she discovered through blues guitarists Joe Bonamassa, Warren Haynes, and Tab Benoit. Her primary configuration for larger venues is a Category 5 Camille head (90 watts) through a 4×12 cabinet. For smaller venues she uses a Category 5 Andrew 50-watt 2×12 combo with a custom Don Ritter configuration featuring both 10-inch and 12-inch speakers. The amps use 6V6 power tubes for an American-voiced Fender-style character. She has used Category 5 exclusively for over a decade.
What is the Delaney Fishcaster?
The Delaney Fishcaster is Samantha Fish’s signature guitar built by Delaney Guitars — a custom design crossing a Telecaster Thinline with a semi-hollow body, featuring a distinctive “fish” f-hole, swamp ash body, maple neck, and rosewood fingerboard. The original mini-humbucker and single-coil pickup configuration was replaced by Fish with Klein humbuckers for more output and warmth. The guitar appears on every studio album she has recorded. She primarily uses it for slide work, particularly on “Gone for Good.”
What effects does Samantha Fish use?
Fish’s documented pedalboard includes: Analog Man King of Tone (primary overdrive); MXR Carbon Copy (analog delay); JHS Mini Foot Fuzz (fuzz); Electro-Harmonix Micro-POG (octave generator); Boss PS-5 Super Shifter (pitch shifting); JHS Tidewater Tremolo; Dunlop Volume Pedal; Boss TU-3 Chromatic Tuner; and a Hungry Robot Buffer. She also has an MXR Custom Badass Modified Overdrive (a gift from Mike Zito) and a Line 6 DL-4 for specific delay applications.
What open tunings does Samantha Fish use?
Fish uses open D tuning (D-A-D-F#-A-D) as her primary open tuning for slide work, keeping her Delaney 512 permanently in this tuning for live performance convenience. She uses a variety of open tunings across her compositions but has standardized many of them to open D to simplify on-stage management. She keeps her Fender Telecaster Blacktop in dropped D or open G for specific songs.
Who influenced Samantha Fish’s guitar playing?
Fish’s influences reflect the broad blues tradition she works within: the classic blues canon (Robert Johnson, Memphis Minnie, Muddy Waters), Southern and electric blues guitarists, and the contemporary blues establishment whose peer recognition launched her career (Warren Haynes, Joe Bonamassa, Tab Benoit — all of whom also pointed her toward Category 5 amplifiers). Her country and R&B influences — audible on Belle of the West and Chills & Fever respectively — reflect a musical curiosity that goes beyond the blues tradition’s conventional boundaries. Mike Zito was an early mentor and the connection through which she met Mike Delaney.
What is the Stogie Box Blues cigar box guitar?
The Stogie Box Blues cigar box guitar is a 4-string instrument with a P-bass pickup and floating bridge that Fish purchased at the 2012 King Biscuit Blues Festival in Helena, Arkansas — the same year she won Best New Artist at the Blues Music Awards. The instrument has become a fan favorite in her live sets, described in the Premier Guitar Rig Rundown as sounding “like a gargling grizzly bear.” Its P-bass pickup — a single large flat coil originally designed for bass guitar — produces a specific thick, nasal, harmonically limited tone that is immediately recognizable as a cigar box guitar and that no conventional six-string can approximate.
