Guitar Nerd
NERDY GUITAR STUFF |
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Dave Zumsteg at DL Music in LA collects homemade guitars. He assured me that this "resonator", made with a speaker, a barbecue grill and two heating vents, was unplayable, but I begged to differ with the aid of a small bottle of Jaegermeister. Photos include me with a number of axes, but favourites include my 1963 Fender Stratocaster which looks like a giant port wine stain, has had three tremelo blocks and seven whammy bars and has been a faithful companion longer than I care to admit. I'm afraid to fly it or put it in a truck any more, so my road Strat is a Custom Shop Desert Sand maple neck built by Todd Krause, which also gets some studio use. It's the guitar that was recorded on "Aretha" by Rumer as well as on the last ABC album. |
| My first "real" vintage electric was a 1963 Gibson SG Standard with Maestro Vibrola which I got when I was 14 and foolishly sold three years later. After soundcheck in Chicago with ABC about 5 years ago, I went to a shop and saw a similar one. In the mid-life crisis moment that followed, I pulled it off the wall, bought it, and used it at the gig, as well as at the Hollywood Bowl the next night. That's the guitar in the "Man Who Stole My Life" video, which has seen lots of studio action. It's on Rumer's "Goodbye Girl", ABC's last album, and a heap of my own material. There are also some photographs of a black Bastardcaster. It's a Telecaster with a neck plate that says it's a 63. The neck could be, but I'm not sure about the body. I bought it with the 3 pickups in it, took out the originals and put Seymour Duncan Stacks in the bridge and neck positions. It's my main travel guitar. It's been around the world several times, survived Indonesian luggage handlers and been in more trucks than a midwestern runaway. I think I've used it with every artist I've played with, and it's the guitar I used for the musical examples in the "Music Revolutions" series I worked on for the Smithsonian Channel. STOP PRESS!! Latest acquisitions - a 1964 Gibson Firebird 3 (that's the old Reverse model) and a 1961 Watkins Cppycat, both pretty clean, both sounding great. The Bird is out with the ABC gear - none of this "keep it under the bed" stuff! Must figure out how a) take photographs and 2) post them.... |
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