Coffee Talk
You look at it and I bet the first thing you think is, “That’s one of those ridiculous heavy metal guitars from the 80s.” I bet most of y’all think it was designed by metalheads for metalheads too, right? Well, guess what - you’re fuckin wrong. Gibson designed this thing in 1958! This is Don Draper shit, not Dimebag Darrell shit. The design is totally mid-century modern, maybe even googie. Look at it again now. See that reachy angular shit? If this thing were a house, Jackie Treehorn would live in it.
But so as I was saying, I did not want one of these. A few years ago I was in another music store phase. That’s the kind of phase in which, for whatever reason, once a week or so I go into retail music stores and fondle the gear, chat the creatures up, things like that. I didn’t even have any kind of aim to buy anything at that time. But one day at Music Unlimited in San Leandro, I looked up at the wall and saw this natural finish Explorer and thought “ha ha metal guitar - I have to play it.” Like it was going to be funny. Well, I wasn’t laughing when my fingers touched the thing and four new songs came flying out! It sounded fantastic. It felt fantastic. And it wasn’t even a Gibson - it was an Epiphone (Gibson’s made-somewhere-un-American downmarket brand). I’m not a Gibson guy, so with Gibson-like guitars I’m not susceptible to the same kind of snobismo I have about Fender-like guitars. Still, I don’t ever just buy a guitar on a whim, because all guitars are expensive. So I kept coming back and playing the thing, looking at it online, watching the video of “11 o’clock tick tock.” Until a couple months had gone by and I’d satisfied myself that it wasn’t just a whim, went down there and slapped the money down.
Even though I don’t play it a ton, I have not regretted buying this guitar at all. I didn’t really like the pickups it came with, which are some kind of really dark-sounding retro Gibson PAFs. This all-Korina guitar is actually pretty bright, and those pickups weren’t doing it justice at all. So I put a Seymour Duncan pearly gates in the bridge and a Jazz Model SH-2 in the neck. I had to get gold pickup covers and fit them to keep the look the same. I fucked up the hole that the volume pot sticks through by overdrilling it. Oh well. Anyway, here is an example of The Coffee Table in action with the original pickups - in the luxuriously / self-indulgently long second solo (starts at 2:24) in The Bruises Of Unknown Origin’s runaway hit Charles Glympse.
XOXO
~Chuck G
Creamsicles Are For Licking
I’ve neglected my blog, but now I’m back. Lots has changed for me, in many ways. Even in the guitar ways. Well, especially in the guitar ways! Guitar change is just a function of time for me, and it has been a while, right? But man, I’ve got something taking shape right now that’s gonna kick your balls off! (Venom reference, if you missed that) What I have in the works is a semi-official mutant and, uncharacteristically for one of mine, it’s actually being done beautifully. All the deets are coming soon.
In the meantime, I thought I’d warm this space up with a quick update on The Creamsicle. This is my beloved Jazzmaster mutant. See the previous post for details on this guitar’s genesis. Last time we saw this one, it was in dire need of a neck, its second MIJ neck having warped. Well, you know what I decided? I decided that rosewood necks suck and I don’t like em. And I’m never gonna put another rosewood neck on a Fender guitar again!
That’s the negative way of looking at things. On the positive side, I just adore the “hot rod vintage” neck that I put on the EJ Strat. Experiencing a braineurysm one day, I took it off the Strat and put it on the Creamsicle. It fit. Oh, it fit really nicely. So I got another one of those hot rod vintage necks for the Strat and now here we are with the gorgeous maple-necked Creamsicle that I think is better than any Jazzmaster I’ve ever played..
It even matches the Orange cabinet. The black pickup covers and knobs were my 5-year-old boy’s idea. Can’t argue with that - it looks very cool, I think. It plays extremely well too, the 9.5” radius and medium jumbo frets being a big improvement over the vintage style 7.25” and thin frets, in my book.
The EJ Strat with the same neck demonstrates that playability improvements could still be made - the Strat has better action & sustain because it has a better bridge. But I think this Creamsicle is really in the sweet spot of playability vs. character, and I don’t want to change a thing about it. I find myself playing & recording with it more often than with the smoother Strat, especially for the main track of a tune, where I think it’s important to have a unique sound.
With their two-piece bridge and tailpiece thing, Jazzmasters have something that most solid body guitars don’t - that reverby, resonant length of string behind the bridge that adds so much character, uniqueness, and unpredictability. The vintage Jazzmaster hardware and dimensions are problematic because the tailpiece is so far back that the angle of attack of the string on the bridge is really low. With the resulting low tension over the bridge saddles, this makes for some sustain limitations and causes the strings to buzz sometimes and to jump out of the saddles with really hard playing, especially when you still have the original Jazzmaster-style grooved bridge. Over the years I’ve learned to solve those problems, mostly, either by filing deeper grooves into the Jazzmaster bridge, or, as in the case with the Creamsicle, by using a vintage Mustang bridge which is the same as the Jazzmaster bridge except for the saddles. I also wrap the posts of the bridge with electrical tape so it doesn’t float so much in its postholes.
Fender makes some new versions of the Jazzmaster, called “Player’s Jazzmaster” that take some of the pain out of the arrangement by moving the tailpiece up toward the bridge. They also use Gibson tune-o-matic bridges. I’ve played a couple of these and I get it, but I like mine better. I think you lose some of the character and a lot of the sympathetic reverb when you shorten that length of string. And my modded Mustang bridge is just as good for me as a tune-o-matic.
Some people do what Robert Smith of The Cure did with his Jazzmaster when he played one. He added a brass buzz-stop thingy which sat in between the bridge and tailpiece and forced the strings down hard against the bridge in order to kill the reverb and to increase the angle of attack. No question, his guitar sounded cool. But I still think one loses something in taming this beast.
Anyway, I love my Creamsicle and that’s that. Stay tuned for more on the next project, which I think is even cooler!
XO
Dickey
Guitars Come Apart
I discovered at an early age that electric guitars can be taken apart. Over its short and brutal life, my first electric guitar, a sunburst Les Paul copy from the Sears catalog, suffered all manner of disassembly, reassembly, experimentation, and ultimately, destruction. In fact, in its final configuration that poor guitar consisted solely of a neck joined to a splintered, hewn-down scrap of wood slathered in white boat paint. I had also nailed a DiMarzio Super Distortion II pickup to the wood and had emblazoned “Zerstörung!” (that’s German for destruction) in red model paint where the pickguard should have been.
Ever since that time, I have owned very few guitars that I’ve left alone - only my beloved Goya strat copy, a vintage Mosrite Ventures model, and a vintage Fender Mustang have I left stock. It’s worth noting, I suppose, that I only owned the latter two for a couple months. I’ve tweaked almost all my guitars, mostly inexpertly. But they do what they need to do and it’s all sorts of fun. Since I’ve been doing a lot of guitar tweaking lately, I thought it would be fun to write about the current stable of mutants.
Creamsicle Jazzmaster
One night in 1993 I had a dream of a gorgeous vintage pale yellow Fender Jazzmaster that gave me “that sound,” and with which, in the dream, I regaled thousands of screaming fans. After that dream I became obsessed with Jazzmasters. Fast forward to 2010 and by now I’ve owned 3 of them. The first was a sunburst Made In Japan (MIJ) Fender ‘62 reissue which I ended up destroying at a Pie show at Boston University in 1996. The destruction was an accident, at first - I loved that guitar. I ended up replacing that one with another MIJ reissue, this one curiously light & snappy. It would become The Creamsicle Jazzmaster.
The Creamsicle Jazzmaster began life with a white finish and red tortoiseshell pickguard. Not my first choice, but it played so well I had to have it. As far as I know, Fender has never made a Jazzmaster exactly like the one in my dream - pale yellow with a dark brown tortoise-shell pickguard. And I’m not careful & patient enough to have duplicated such a finish myself. When I saw The Flaming Lips play The Rat in Boston in 1996, Wayne played an orange Jazzmaster. Remembering that show, I decided to sand off the white finish and, with orange spray paint, to approximate the radness of Wayne’s guitar. I got hold of a white pickguard to complete the look.
And thus The Creamsicle Jazzmaster was born. Somehow, the goopy, toxic spray paint has not ruined the sound of this guitar. The body is made of either a really light alder or maybe basswood. It’s the best-feeling guitar I’ve ever worn - the balance of it. And being light, it has a great snappy sound and instant jang-jang keening response. I put Seymour Duncan “Hot For Jazzmaster” pickups in it, like I always do with Jazzmasters. That’s MY pickup, so I can’t help it.
The only crummy thing about this guitar is the neck. The first one warped badly, which is why I played a black US-made reissue as my main guitar for quite a while. I replaced that neck with another MIJ neck a couple years ago and guess what.. it just warped again. I can’t believe it. Anyway, this lovely guitar is currently taken apart, because its neck is messed up. And the pickups have been donated to my Custom Strat.
From L to R: Squiremaster, Creamsicle Jazzmaster, Custom Eric Johnson Strat (phase 2).
Custom Eric Johnson Strat
This is my main guitar, my best guitar at the moment. I made it for myself after my US-made Jazzmaster was stolen. It’s an Eric Johnson alder body with THE BEST GUITAR NECK EVER MADE - a Fender hot rod soft-v vintage strat neck. I bought the body and neck from the Stratosphere on Ebay, then put it together with a custom pickguard from Pickguardian, and various Seymour Duncan pups in a couple different configurations:
- Phase 1: Seymour Duncan surf pickups neck regular, no middle, bridge angled.
- Phase 2: With the same Seymours, but both angled, as pictured. That was the prettiest look for this guitar. Like a Fender Lead II or Mustang.
- Phase 3: Now the Seymour Duncan “hot for Jazzmaster” pickups from the Creamsicle are in the Strat. Well, the bridge pickup is. Seems that in the process of trying to add the SD hot pup to the neck position, I fried it. Oh well. Instead I added the US reissue stock neck pup, and it sounds great - a little brighter and bouncier than the hot one.
Here is the Custom Eric Johnson strat today, with Jazzmaster pickups crammed into a mutilated pickguard.
Squiremaster
Right after my black US-made Jazzmaster got ripped off, while I was quite contrite over the circumstances thereof, and just before I’d resolved to put together a really nice guitar, I decided to do what I could with a real cheapo guitar I had that I actually really liked. Just to see if a cheapo guitar could become my main squeeze. Well, the experiment ultimately failed. It’s not my main guitar. But it is fun and interesting. After much violent routing and such, I fitted a Jazzmaster bridge and tailpiece/vibrato into a Squier strat. No mean feat. No graceful one either, but if you squint at it, it looks pretty cool. See the first pic above, first on the left.
Because the Squiremaster is so light and because it has a Jazzmaster bridge & tailpiece, it has a really great & unique sound. Here is a Bruises Of Unknown Origin track recorded with this guitar, back when it had a Seymour Duncan twang banger Tele imitation bridge pickup for a strat. Now it has a JB Jr. Anyway, check out screw me to hear it go.
Univox Strat
When he retired, my excellent neighbor John moved to Costa Rica and left me a bunch of guitars. The Squire that became the Squiremaster was one of them, and also a Cameo Mosrite copy bass. But the best was this Univox Strat. It had been seriously modified and damaged before I laid paws on it. The wood was so fried that there was no way to resurrect it with a whammy bar.
Still, it’s always been super fun to play and has lots of songs in it. The very first time I plugged it in, the Richard Bitch song Sit In The Sun came flying out of it (that recording features the black US Jazzmaster, though).
I messed with a few different pickups on this one, and it sat around for a couple years taken apart. A couple months ago I started lusting after a Tele, and having a Tele pickup and bridge around, I decided to graft them onto the Univox. So I chopped into a strat pickguard and added some other SD pickups I had, and here we go..
The Univox Strat with tele bridge pickup. Sounds fab.
Cameo Mosrite Copy Bass
Well, here it is. It has a US reissue Jazzmaster bridge guitar pickup in it. With total frankenstein hardware on this thing, I can’t quite get the intonation right, but it’s really light and fun to play. It’s very clean & bright with the Jazm pickup, but still has enough output to make amps bristle. A caveman job for sure, but super fun. Listen to this track by The Bronson to hear it in action: Eskimoes
Yep, so that’s the mutilated stable at the moment. I’m sure in a year from now most of them will have different pickups and the Creamsicle will be back in action. Maybe it will even have become my dream guitar by then.
Out,
Jxxxx
Feedback is Holy
Feedback is holy and I can’t wait to join others in worship. After a year of not playing live, I have a couple shows coming up. And I’m stoked.
My band Richard Bitch is resurrected with some new and returning members to play the Rickshaw Stop in San Francisco on Thursday, March 18. The next month we’ll play Hotel Utah in San Francisco.
What’s in store? Well, loud guitar. And, of course, feedback. I just had the idea yesterday to start writing about guitars, amps and playing. It’s easy to get into the gearhead stuff, and I certainly will. My more abstract ideas and feelings surrounding playing are more difficult for me to express. I thought I’d start with the toughest and most preposterous of all - my ideas about feedback.
Feedback feels like ghosts to me. I get a very spooky feeling when I grab some gain and begin the process of calling the spirits - usually putting the volume right on the cusp of feeding back, then coaxing out the oscillation by slowly moving the whammy bar and letting the strings begin to vibrate. Initiating that crosstalk between the amp, the guitar pickups and some delay is like conjuring a wind that begins to compound. Teasing in and out of that layering by standing at different angles to the amp or bringing volume down then back up is just one of my favorite things to do. I feel like I’m channeling ghosts of notes, melodies and feelings. Feedback is spooked-out holy shit!!
