Guitars,guitars and more guitars.

Guitars are to a player like shoes are to some women. You can never have to many. To me many of them are like this they are like girls,some you date,some you chase,some are way out of your league and then there are those you keep. It is an interesting relationship the player has with the instrument. I wish I had every guitar I ever had that I got rid of. I'd be really well off.Some that I've owned went on to become collectibles worth thousands. I currently own 8. Why so many? Like a car mechanic you need proper tool for the job. I never go to a gig with just one. I always have a back up in case I pop a string. I own a stock American made Fender strat that is like 10 years old now.I bought it new and it is beginning to show some wear. It's a great guitar but the next has always been a bit temperamental. I am one of those who like light strings and low action so some of my ladies take issue with that from time to time. Having just moved here I recently found a tech down the street to tweak them periodically. I own a 69 Fender telecaster. The world first true electric guitar..affectionately nick named the "Plank" by early players. Here is how I came to get this guitar. There was a guitar player back in Alaska we used to call "Skellator"cause he looked like the cartoon. Bald with long white hair and pasty white skin from too many years in bars. I was doing a gig once when he pulled out this guitar and played it. It was old,beat up kinda butterscotch colored with a bunch of brass parts(bridge,pick guard,nut) I remember thinking,"Man that cool looking I'd like to own that" but I thought fat chance. His bass player would go to work with me for years afterward. One day a year or so later I stopped into a pawn shop on 2 street just to look around. I was looking for a Tele cuz I was starting to get some country gigs. Low and behold there was that guitar sitting there for a mere 300 bucks!! I knew the lady who ran the place(that another funny guitar related story I'll tell at a later date) all I had on me was 20 dollars I asked her if that would be enough to hold it till that Friday when I got paid. She agreed so that Friday I had that Tele. Now this guy was a bit of a crack head and his gear showed it. The guitar was in dire need of work. The frets were gone,the keys were not working and the pickups needed to be replaced. So I took it to Chris. He put some decent sized frets on it replaced the keys and we loaded it up with Seymore Duncan pickups. I kept all the old parts cus even in disrepair they are worht something. When I got it back I had a gig that night with Dave ,Skellators former bass player. Dave was playing with him the next night.Dave noticed the guitar and I told him the killer deal I got I had less than 5 bills invested in a guitar that could easily fetch 3 grand were I to sell it(I never will) Dave told me that when Skellator found out I bought his old guitar he was totally bummed. From that time on every time he'd see me he'd say "Hows my guitar" I'd reply "It plays like melted butter and IT AIN"T YOUR GUITAR ANYMORE"! This was the best deal I ever got and every time I've pulled that thing out of the case it turns heads. I have a pair of beautiful guitars that I had custom made for me. For a number of years I played an ESP Tiger stripped strat that I had out fitted with EMG pickups and a Floyd Rose trem system. The Floyd revolutionized guitar playing in the 80's because Mr Floyd designed a double locking tremolo bar that gave guys like Eddie Van Halen nthe ability to do dive bombs and the such on the guitar and keep it dead in tune. You can literally drop the bar all the way down till the strings are slack and they will pop back in tune. I have a friend who was living in Seattle back in the late 70's when Floyd walked into the music store he was working at. He had a proto type of the devise on a strat. He was looking for a partner to back him. The owner blew him off. I remember my friend telling the owner that millions of dollars just walked out the front door. Less than a year later Floyd gave an early proto type to Eddie and boom the rest was history. Wish I'd been there for that. I've been using them non-stop since 1983. My Warmoth guitars are killer. 5 AAA maple tops. The kind of wood you find on high end furniture. Birds eye maple necks. These are my classic rock working guitars. I sold my tiger stripped guitar and had the first Warmoth built. It is an emerald green color with black hardware. It went thru 3 sets of pick ups before this happened. Chris told me one day he had a set of used EMGS that he could put in there. Funny haw certain Mojo can follow guitars. When I got the guitar back I looked at those pickups and noticed that the edge of the middle one was slightly wore. They turned out to be the first set of EMGs that had been in my tiger stripped ESP! that guy who bought it had new pickups put in. The moment I plugged in I had my old sound!. That guitar has been a serious trooper. Never EVER had any neck issues,stays in tune fine and plays like a dream..my 'Emerald Princess". George Benson was my introduction to the world of Jazz. I remember seeing him for the first time in the late 70's on the Midnight Special. I tuned in that night cuz one of my other guitar hers was on that night Calos Santana. I'm watching and out steps this cool well dressed black guy holding this big fat hollow body. Who proceeds to blow me away with his rendition on Leon Russel's "This Masquerade" I had never heard that kind of music before. I ran out and bought "Breezin" ,"In Flight" and "Weekend In LA" My affection for his music would lead me deep into the world of Jazz and the likes of Miles Davis,Coletrane,Parker,Duke Ellington ad Joe Pass. These days I play more of that than anything else. My Jazz guitar is an Ibanez George Benson model. I like them because they are a smaller body easier to play and you don't have the feed back problems the bigger boxes do. For years I couldn't bring myself to buy "just a jazz guitar" because I was only a closet jazzer. The bulk of my gigs were blues and classic rock gigs. But once again I found myself ina pawn shop and noticed a Polytone guitar amp for sale...40 bucks!! the same amp George uses. It was broke but 40 bucks come on!. So I bought it had it repaired and for less that 300 nI had a 600 jazz amp!...but no guitar to go along with it. I had owned a George Benson prior to attending school in LA but I sold back to the guy I bought it from cuz at that time I really couldn't play jazz. I went down to the local music store where I had been doing business for years and years. I had noticed some Ibanez hollow bodies but when I got there they had been sold. I had a "casual" conversation about the Benson with Mark the owner. A few days later I stopped in and there was a brand new one sitting there. I had made no comment about buying one but Mark said.."Here Steve take it home and play it and see what you think". It was the most expensive guitar I would ever buy. 1850.00. But as soon as I played it I was hooked. Mark worked a deal for 1350 and payments. Right after that I got a ton of Jazz gigs. The guitar paid for itself in less than 6 months. The Polytone eventually crapped out and was replaced with a Fender DSP Deluxe and that guitar with that amp is a marriage made in heaven. I sound like a cross between George and Pat Methany attempting to play like Joe Pass. I'll finish this with the story of "Red Dogg". In the early 80's I heard Eddie Van Halen for the first time. It was like hearing Hendrix,nothing in the guitar world could lead up to that and nothing would ever be the same afterward.The way he did dive bombs,pick squeels,the hugeness of his "Brown"sound. It blew me totally out of the water. I went out and bought a Fender mustang,only to find that one touch of the trem bar put it horribly out of tune. As I was preparing to move to LA I came across a redish copy of a strat. I think I got it for 250.00. With a standard strat I still couldn't get his sound. Then one day I was sitting around and noticed that I had a humbucking pickup from an old Les Paul I no longer owned. So I went over to a buddy of mines and had him remove the single coil bridge pickup,route the body and pick guard and install this humbucker. Soon as we restrung it,tuned it and plugged into my amp, I hit one power chord!!!CRUNCH HEAVEN!!!Almost EDDIE!!!. Not long after that I left to go to LA. The first couple of weeks in school we took a bus to Fullerton's and visited the Fender factory. One of my classmate got a couple of Fender Statocastor headstock stickers(rare in those days) He gave me one. By this time the original next had warped beyond repair. I had found this little shop down the street from the School. LA GUITAR WORKS. Run by these two oriental guys. Jimmy could do anything with a guitar you wanted. I had them install a new neck and painted the headstock to match the body. They replaced the white pick guard with a black one and put in Seymore Duncan Hot Rails then replaced the humbucker with a Jeff Beck Signature humbucker. They also installed my first Floyd. They were near impossible to get in LA then due to supply and demand. Hence was born "RED DOGG"! A guitar that would serve me well over the next 10 years,Thru 2 cd's,a tour,tons of gigs...unfortunately I would lose him and my beloved PRS to a nasty divorce...sometimes I think I should have a replica of the dogg made...maybe someday.