My sisters fourteenth birthday was a pivotal day for me. As a present she received a sweet Pioneer Centrex stereo system as well as a bunch of albums. That night she begged me to come into her room to hear this awesome song. Being the seven year old (I turned eight two days later) music connoisseur that I was I obliged. She handed me the cover while she dropped the needle on the record. The cover had a bunch of old women on it. Needless to say I wasn't too impressed. I was even less impressed when the song started with some dude singing acapella (technically there was a really soft kick drum for accompaniment but you could hardly hear it) about his mama and being on the run from the long arm of the law. I didn't want to hear some acapella singing as my seven year old heart wanted to rock. I told my sister the song was lame. She told me just to sit still and shut up. Pretty soon the song started to build with some harmony vocals kicking in. Then all of a sudden some dude screamed, "yeah" and this song with the mellow introduction kicked into overdrive and rocked me like no other song had before.
The song was Renegade by what would come to be my favorite band Styx.
From that point on I knew I had to play guitar like the guys in Styx. I became obsessed with the instrument. In short order I knew that Tommy Shaw played a Gibson Les Paul Custom and James J.Y. Young played a sunburst Fender Stratocaster. I even knew that they used a one of a kind overdrive pedal called the Yoshinerator built by J.Y.'s college classmate and friend Yoshi.
Yep I had the bug. A few years later at the age of twelve I was looking in a dumpster at a nearby condo development and spied an electric guitar that had been thrown away. As I pulled it out of the dumpster I noticed that the headstock had been snapped off. I searched around and found the headstock and took the whole mess home with me. I guess it's a good thing I didn't find some weed or I might have taken it home and become a pothead! This is a picture of a different guitar but it was the same make and model.Even at a young age I knew my way around tools so I puttered around in my dads garage until I found two metal plates. I drilled holes in the plates and attached with screws one plate to the front and one plate to the back of the broken headstock. This coupled with some Elmers glue fixed the headstock break enough so the guitar could be strung up and played. Oh yeah the bridge was also missing so I fashioned a small piece of wood into a makeshift bridge. A year later I purchased a Gibson Tun-O-Matic bridge with my paper route money and installed it.
I was always messing with the Kay. I repainted it a bunch of times. I even added forearm and tummy contours so it would be more like a Fender Stratocaster. By the time I was fifteen I had upgraded to a Kramer guitar with a Floyd Rose.
That was the beginning. I ended up learning to play reasonably well by the time I was in high school. I even played in my high school Jazz band for a year. Of course the requisite garage bands were started and disbanded. While Styx is still my sentimental favorite band I developed musical tastes ranging from Depeche Mode to Iron Maiden. I'll admit it, U2 is tied with Styx as my favorite band.
A whole slew of guitars followed at various points. I've had guitars built by the following manufacturers: Gibson, Fender, Gretsch, Hamer, Kramer, Jackson, Charvel, Takamine, Guild, Larrivee, and probably a few other manufacturers I'm forgetting.
My two favorites were a early version of the Jimmy Vaughn Tex-Mex Fender Strat and a 1976 Gibson Les Paul Deluxe. The Fender is the only guitar I've never sold and will stay with me until I die. I've customized it a bit and had the frets leveled. It plays as good or better than any Fender Strat I've ever touched. I get compliments on it all the time. An interesting note was that the parts in this guitar were made in the states and then shipped across the border to be assembled and painted. Here's a pic of me playing the Strat. Please note the cool Utah Jazz warmup top I'm wearing.
The 1976 Les Paul Deluxe was an interesting bird. I bought it from a buddy/band mate in the mid-nineties. A normal Les Paul Deluxe has mini-humbucking pickups but this guitar actually came with factory installed Gibson P.A.F. pickups. It also had a sandwich mahogany body with a plain maple cap and a maple neck instead of the usual mahogany. The reality is that this guitar had the electronics of a Gibson Les Paul Standard with the body and neck of a Les Paul Deluxe. Whatever the combination the guitar was magic. It had incredible tone and it played like butter. Even better was it was actually somewhat valuable because of the strange combination of parts and materials. To the right is me playing this Les Paul.
My Les Paul played loads of gigs and studio sessions. I acquired it in used condition and took pretty good care of it. Eventually the guitar started to experience worn frets and became harder to play. I had heard that refretting Gibson Les Pauls was an expensive proposition and a pain in the bum. A few years ago I ended up getting a really good offer for the guitar and sold it.
Selling that guitar was pretty much my biggest mistake ever. I tried to replace it a couple of times with various Les Pauls but none of them were even close to as good. The price of new Les Pauls has risen dramatically in the last several years but the quality has lagged. You can read about Gibson's problems here.
I really need a Les Paul. They have a unique tone that is necessary for my current music projects. What do you do when you can't buy a decent newer model? You can either investigate other high-end guitars made by manufacturers like Hamer and Paul Reed Smith or you can............build your own.
While I love Hamer and PRS guitars guess which choice I made.
4 comments:
You are awesome! Watching as you cut the template and hearing you in depth dissertation on the merits of different kinds of wood is giving me goosebumps. Your older siblings must be grand folk to allow you to listen to led zepplin, and iron butterfly.
Hey thanks. Yeah it's funny. My older siblings are quite a bit older than me. I was a very little kid when I was exposed to that music. I remember my oldest bro used to think it fun to drop the needle on Sabbath's Iron man then turn out the lights and lock me in the room alone. The intro to that tune scared the crap out of me. It wasn't very long before I became a Black Sabbath fan.
If you were going to turn 8 then your sister would have been turning 15. She is 7 years older. She gave you great taste in music. Stick with classic Styx and forget about U2. :-)Your sister misses that old stereo.
Yeah Yeah. My sister needs to expand her music horizons.
Post a Comment