Cool instruments I have gotten to play, and about them
By David Fisher. Filed in audio |Tags: Uncategorized
Between my time at Berklee, guitar stores, and various studios (and working with Taylor Barefoot) I got to play some freaking cool guitars in my short time (ok… 15 years) as a guitarist.
Here’s a few highlights of ones that I’ve had the pleasure to have played, and a little bit about them. If I say a year of the instrument, then that’s the actual year. No reissues unless mentioned.
- 1968 Fender Telecaster- Taylor has one that is a custom color green, with a factory Bigsby on it. It’s got to be one of my favorite guitars ever. He always hated me playing it, because it was a guitar he always liked to play and the acidity of my hands makes strings disappear in a day no matter what I do.
- Pre WWII Martin- I wish I knew what model it was, but I was too young at the time to have really ‘gotten’ the Martin numbering scheme. I was having a guitar lesson with John Firesheets back in the day and it was a nice day so we were having it outside on some wooden gardening beams at the garden center next to the music store. This woman that John knew, Tammy I think, came over and talked to us. She worked at the garden center, and said she had her guitar with her and wanted to show us. She brings it over, and hands it to me, and I start playing it while she’s talking. It ends up that it was some pre-WWII Martin that her father or some family member had bought and that recently people had offered her upwards of $45,000 for it. All of a sudden I froze. I had never in my life held anything of such monetary value, and I was like, “Take it… I can’t hold this”. I was terrified that I’d break it on the next strum.
- Les Paul 59′ Historic RI, and a fake one: Taylor was on a Les Paul kick. He bought two 59′ LP Historics (not the Murphy one though). He also picked up a metal body one with a Rosewood neck from some other company (which was freaking cool, but showed fingerprints like nothing else). Now we didn’t know that one of the LPs was fake. As far as we knew we had two real LPs and a really killer metal body copy from another company. But something was wrong/weird. We were wondering one night how close the guitars sounded to each other, and thought that maybe it was just the pickups being the difference. One of the RI’s had Burstbuckers and one had Antiquities. But the Metal copy also had Burstbuckers. We sat down and blind compared the guitars with our backs turned to each other… trying to guess which was which. Oddly enough (I think we even swapped the pickups at one point to test) the metal body clone, and one of the LPs sounded FAR closer (like nearly exactly the same) to each other than the two LPs did to each other. We couldn’t figure it out. We took it as, “Well, I guess that shows that variation in wood matters for a lot”, even after we swapped around the pickups. Years later, for whatever reason he placed a call to Gibson to ask about something on the guitar that was suspect. They said, “That’s not our serial number”. It ended up that upon really close inspection that some tiny tiny details of the guitar weren’t right either. It was a fake. A damn good fake and it played decently, but it’s neck wasn’t ever quite perfect and it wouldn’t stay in tune the same. We couldn’t pinpoint what at first, but our ears did. It does show that you can actually hear the difference between the real thing and a fake.
- 1964 Firebird V Yet another Taylor purchase. Yes, I was able to live vicariously through living in the trail of his guitar purchases. Sure saved me money on guitars for years, but left me with a taste for the best. This guitar was a beast. He was on a Firebird kick for a bit, and had a III, V and VII. This was an awesome guitar. It was huge and had sustain in unreal ways. It really did remind me of driving a massive big-block engine car. It was loud, angry, a bit difficult to handle, but it did feel so good.
- Froggy Bottom Acoustics- This was a mistake on my part. I had played Taylors, Martins, Breedloves, etc before. Taylor made a suggestion to try out a Froggy Bottom, as he had gotten to play some of Will Ackerman’s during the recording of one of his CDs. So when I was in NYC a few years ago I thought, “What the hell”. I went into one of the stores in NYC that had them (can’t remember which, but it might have been Mannys?) God, these are nice acoustics. They range from around 6-15K or so, and they don’t make many a year. There’s more rare acoustics out there (actually a guy in Greensboro makes less than a dozen a year which are becoming hot quickly) but these are really really nice. I often wonder why the same care isn’t put into making guitars as is put into making cellos and violins. Froggy Bottom does just that. Well worth it. Now I’m spoiled on wanting them, but all I have are my crap acoustics. Oh well, some day.
- 1956 Les Paul Junior- That’s right. Not a reissue. I went to go visit friends of the family in Portland early in ‘07 and it ends up that they had two “closet gems” that a grandfather had left them one of them being this and another being a 40’s Gibson jazzbox (can’t remember which one… ES-175?). They were in perfect condition, down to having the original paperwork and tags in the case. It felt almost wrong to play them, but I’m convinced that instruments must be played. Are they worth the excessive amounts that people want for them? Ok, maybe not quite… but there is something a bit special about a guitar that’s my father’s age.
- 1963 Gibson ES330TDC- I am still pissed at Taylor for selling this one. I loved this guitar. It was one of the few 330s I’ve played that didn’t feedback out of control when put in front of a moderately gained amp. It had a neck repair, which killed it’s “collectors value” and it had a Bigsby put on it. I loved it. One day I came in the studio and he had sold it and bought another guitar or two. I almost killed him. I wanted to buy that guitar from him, but for whatever reason another guitar caught his eye and he had to flip it.
Interesting Amps:
- Vox AC30HW- I simply love these amps. I’ve tried to buy one a few times, but when I had the money I got a Minimoog Voyager instead.
- Germino Masonette and Rockgrinder- These were super early in Greg’s building days. I think they were SN #7 and 11 or something like that. Had to use a hot-plate to not kill yourself (and now he’s building even higher wattage amps) with the sound, but they were rocking amps.
- And as for two that I want but haven’t been able to play (but won’t be able to afford for a long time) would be a Divided by 13 amp, and an original Trainwreck (good luck finding that!).
And a really concise list of other neat ones, without descriptions:
- Too many 1985-1996 PRS guitars of all types
- 1958 strat neck with 196x body.
- 1963 Gibson SG
- Handful of other 58/59 LP Historic/Murphy reissues
- Tried every vintage Fender Mustang I see, don’t like em
- 1964 Fender Jaguar
- Various 60’s and 70’s strats and teles
-  1896 Mandolin
- 68′ Fender Jazz Bass
- One of Tony Levin’s 70’s Musicman basses
- An ARP 2500, many ARP 2600s
- A Moog Modular 55
- 1968 Gibson ES335 (hated that guitar)
- and more than I can even remember.