Electrical Guitar Part 2

The old shredder - made of so many disparate parts - 1988 to current.

So many guitars… but going right back, I was sort of forced to make them. Or I wanted to. Or something along those lines. My fathers do-it-yourself, depression-era DNA is in there somewhere, but “parts-castering” was something I ended up doing from the outset. Like so many others. It’s funny to think how little I knew as I did this, and now some 40 years along, the instruments I like best are unmodified and put together by reputable and very well-known guitar manufacturers. I tried more seriously in senior high school, building a fairly elaborate but flawed Telecaster meets Alemic type affair. I still have it - it’s ridiculously heavy and fairly “hard” sounding, but the restoration work I carried out after 30 years of neglect was worth it. But that guitar was usurped by the one pictured above. It began life a sky-blue Japanese strat copy with “Session” on the headstock. You can see it like this two posts ago. I bought it from a flatmate in 1988 and immediately began to modify it. Anyone reading this who knows about this kind of malarky can see what became of it, but I’d say the only original parts are the body, the neck plate and screws, the output jack hardware and perhaps one or two of the control pots. The fretboard was scalloped using various sizes of dry-cell batteries wrapped in sandpaper one day when I was bored in my Prahran share-house. It still gets a play, but only ever in the studio and only ever for stunt work. But it had fun. >>> There’s a kind of global community, predominantly male, who believe in the application of the guitar acquistion formula   -   N + 1  (number of guitars you have, plus one)  -  and I’ve certainly been guilty. I reckon that urge for me is nearing it’s end as I not only contemplate which ones I’m going to part with, but also which ones I’m not going to bother acquiring. It feels awkward to admit that there’s 34 of them, most within a cat-swing of where I’m sitting. It’s crazy. They’ve taken over my life. When I go out and play, it’s pretty much going to be the same four (give or take a couple) that come with me. There’s the special niche guitars for recording or particular gigs - 12 strings, baritones, nashville tuning, dobro, pedal steel, guitar synths - but I’d say there’s a case to lose around ten of them. Does anyone wanna buy some nice guitars? >>> It’s all about keeping the ball in the air - the instruments, studio toys, musical tools… writing these blogs. Following the muse. It’s whatever is around the next corner and what you make of it when you see it. You pick up the tools and set about doing something.