EVH

When the EVH Frankenstein Strats came out... I ran down to the Hollywood Guitar Center like a kid to get the latest G.I. Joe...(in the late 70's).  It was in a big glass case... going round and around (where Blackie had been before... the REAL Blackie, that Hollywood Guitar Center owns).  It looked so lifelike, I had to have it.  I asked how many they had, and what the price was.  They said they still had a 'few' left (for advance purchase), and that it was $23,000.  (WOW... I thought... they are MEANT to be $25,000).  Tempting, but at the time, it was still better (if you had $23,000) to buy a Vintage Tele.  So I passed on the chance.  A few months ago, I came across one of the Charvel guitars that are HAND STRIPED by EVH himself, custom painted at the factory, and then played by EVH himself in concert.  (He seems to play each guitar for at least one song, and averages two 'sellable' guitars per concert).  The guitar comes with a photo of EVH playing YOUR guitar.  Anyway... I got one (see photo).  I got it for about 1/3 the price of the Frankenstein Guitar I had looked at in the store ... and guess what... my guitar was PLAYED by EVH... I think everyone who loves guitars is now must face this choice...do I save up and buy a great copy, that was never anywhere near a great guitarist... or do I spend a lot less, and get a little tiny piece of history that has been played by 'a master'?  Sorry to say, most people who bought an original Frankenstein Strat (Frankenstrat), at over $20,000, now are forced so sell them on EBay for much less... possibly due to the new choices out there from Charvel that are competing with them.

VINTAGE MARKET?

What happened to the used/ vintage guitar market?  Those 'golden' guitars, that people started buying for their 401K plans?  The early Blackguard Tele's (remember people asking 60K plus for them last year?).  The mid-fifties Stratocasters... that doubled and tripled in value last couple of years... those early Les Pauls... the hollowed 'Bursts' of '59 & '60.  Instead of giving some clear indication that the recession has affected vintage guitar prices..... things seem to have just come to a grinding halt.  Those who hold these guitars seem to be sitting in their kitchen, with frozen looks on their face, and their guitars in their humidified closets.  The buyers have all but dried up.  A nocaster Tele from Mac Yasuda's personal collection is for sale on EBay... at auction... valued at $48,000 to $75,000.... I would love to know what it goes for... but we probably will not find out, since this is an auction that will take place in one of Ebay's 'register to bid' auctions.  This top notch guitar, from a top notch collector, will be a true indication of where the vintage market stands.  For the next 90 days, try catching the EBay link to the guitar here. Also... try to see the same guitar here, from Mac's collection.

HEAD TURNER...

As everyone knows... I bought a 'Relic' Charvel.  When I got it, the paint still smelled new... heck, it was barely dry (even though they say Nitro dries fast).  I mean... this stuff was still moist... like latex (cool...).  Anyway... once the paint had a chance to 'suck down' and dry... WHILE I played it... in various environments, countries, and states...and ALSO humidities... the guitar got more and more rich and tonal... more resonant (acoustically).  Is that why instruments that 'go on tour' can sometimes be the ones that sound so good?  I mean ... look at Jeff Beck's original 50's Esquire... the one that nearly fell off his of his van one day while on tour... I feel these guitars need to be played... and do some traveling.. and also have a chance to dry properly in various environments... to finally yield a really nice-playing guitar... a real 'head turner'.

Message from Nick

Dear Fender Custom Shop Guitars and More,

I want to be the guy that comes into my motel room on tour, after I have just checked out.

Nick!!

YOU

Is that an on-coming train... or the stage lights?  What do we really have and what do we really want?  Nikki Sixx says in his latest book (Heroin Diaries)... that he went crazy touring... he hated it... couldn't remember specifics from any given town or motel... and always just (mainly) wanted to get back home.  Is that all we really want? To GET HOME...I have known guys who go on tour... and they all say it s*cks.  Rock Gods want to be Jet pilots, and they (jet pilots) want to be rock gods... doctors want to be golf pro's... you name it........ whatever we choose to do.  Our temporary cure is to wish we were someone else. Take stock of who you are... love it...remember...  someone... out there... wants to be YOU.  

Elephants...

What's it worth?  What's in... what's out?  Is anyone buying ANY guitars in this so-called recession?  I am already getting subtle signs from stores that I deal with that the guitar retail business is cooling down........ and the next thing that will happen is blackguard tele's from the early 50's will be back to 20K again... so if you are a musician, and you have been waiting to sell... it may already be too late to bankroll that camper you've always wanted.  If you own a Relic Fender Strat, be ready to cut your price a bit to sell it on EBay... there are a lot of 'watchers' (lookie loo's) but hardly any buyers (from my own experience at the moment) now on EBay.  I have a guitar I want to sell... but I am going to take a new approach with the dealer I know.. "I will trade you my white elephant for one of your white elephants..." at least then we can all be happier.  There are no white elephants really... just some guitars with a very narrow market.

TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE...

It IS going to happen to you once.. minimum.  It has (I am sure) happened to Keith, Mick, Ronnie, Jeff, Joe, John, George...hey... all of us.  I am currently selling an old guitar, that I thought was totally original.  A fairly big dealer on the East coast sold it to me.  What was the warning sign?... try a price tag that allowed for me to (supposedly) make an 'instant' profit of 15%, if I had turned around, and sold the guitar (assuming it has been totally original).  It wasn't.  Someone had modified it... then it had been put back... sure... original 50's pots and capacitors had been returned to the guitar, but there were still holes here and there (think also about where hidden holes on a guitar can hide... under the tuning machines on a Fender (ie. if someone at one time had a non-original tuners on it)...or under the pickguard (if someone drilled extra holes... for either another pickguard... or some dumb switch... sorry)... anyway... please only deal with people you can totally trust... the con men are out there my friend....warning signs are prices that seem TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE.

Pickups...and More Pickups...

So I am putting together a pickup collection... I purchased a John Birch humbucker... pictured... (after Oliver Leiber told me that they are the reason that the old Zemaitis guitars sound so good) ...I bought it from John Birch...in England, on EBay. I have Lindy Fralin's doing me a rewind on some old Jonathan Wilson pickups (out of a GVCG)..Lindy's shop consists of himself, his wife, and a couple employees working in his shop.. I also have another new set of tele pickups, with staggered alnico poles... coming stright from Jonathan Wilson (of GVCG fame, of course). Most of these little gems are en-route as we speak (apart from the John Birch II). I want to note that Lindy Fralin takes a while to do a rewind , but it is well worth the time... they are meant to be great. So what I have for everyone today is a lot of 'hurry up and wait'.... let's talk tomorrow... maybe a pickup will come in the mail.... or something....

David Lee Roth

Someone asked me if I was a good guitarist....my response...I stood there and said nothing....looking for words...then my girl piped up....for me...'Yeah...he's really good....'. I looked at her in surprise. Apparently, George Harrison never considered himself a good guitarist. Does that mean that in order to stay open to learning new things, we can't ever get caught up in ourselves...or ever think we are 'fantastic'... or 'amazing'? Maybe we can keep it all to ourselves, and just keep our ego's at bay...not become one of my favorite ego's.... Mr David Lee Roth. Don't get me wrong, I am not George Harrison, but I guess my timing's got better. Playing is sort of like writing...if you suddenly notice you're rolling along, and people are enjoying it...you have to fight not to make yourself a cake just to celebrate. But remember... while your blowing out the candles... all the music has stopped.

Gilligan's Island

To some people, what's inside their guitar is sort of like the surprise inside a box of Crackerjack...we have no idea what's in there. The ingredients include capacitors, wires, pots (volume and maybe tone)...and other 'stuff'. If most of us were on a desert island, we would have to spend days with our soldering iron (which luckily got shipwrecked with us... along with a power supply, just like in Gilligan's Island... where they had all this stuff you knew was not on their boat). If it was Gilligan's Island, the professor would fix it. If EVH were around.. hey... maybe he'd help out. EVH knows how his guitar works...for sure. So... open up the latch, take a look under the hood... why not?

Bollocks

Dear Fender Custom Shop Guitars and More,

Yes... I DO have a pile of guitars. I consider it my museum..broken necks, pieces of wood, pickups...some old underwear....my number one is the one that survived. By the way...what the h*ll does 'Me thinks not' and all that mean? Cut the rubbish.

Nick
Punk for Evah!

Museums

Do you have a 'Guitar Museum' in your house? Guitars that you would love to play every day... but dare not.. because they are just too important to you to wear the frets down on? Bet you do... whether it's 5 mint Danelectros, all in little gig bags leaning in a closet, or... in my case... Keith Urban's Strat (from a photoshoot... he actually plays a tele)...one of Santana's personal PRS guitars...and my treasured tele that plays like a dream... yes... these guitars don't get played much. Instead, I beat the heck out of my every day player..if my dog Elvis licks the strings...hey..that's extra character...drop it...hey, as long as it doesn't crack the wood or hurt the neck... don't care. But when I bought the other guitars... I wanted to play them, and conned myself that they (each alone) would be my forever #1 for life (like Lucille)....so...am I alone... 'Me thinks not'....

Rusty

So why do all the little rusty screws on my pickup cover keep getting moisture on them and rusting more? Is this as bad a Gibson tuners that suddenly fall apart from age?...I really don't care...but in a humid 'Island' environment, it makes me think... if I had to play gigs down at the 'Conch Shell Bar and Grill' every night, right by the water, how much work would I have to do on my guitar every week to keep it playing? Does plastic suddenly look good? Not only that... but every time I have seen one of those 'self-tuning' Les Pauls... I have cracked up laughing...Who the heck wants a guitar like that? Well... maybe ME... if you live on an island, your guitar GOES OUT OF TUNE every few hours...whereas, in LA, it always stays in pretty good tune for days (I mean slightly sharp or flat)... here by the seaside, it goes WAY out of tune ... anyway... just thinking out loud...and watching my guitar gently weep...

Rust

So I am still testing my Charvel Nitro Relic guitar. When I got it, she had a wonderful birdseye maple neck (rock hard), and a great 'Relic' coral-red nitro paintjob. I noticed something familiar about the smell of the paint job... since it is still giving off a 'new smell'... and finally noticed it is the same way early vintage cars smell, when they sit in the sun... old Model T's and the like were actually painted with the same nitro. When I took it down to be set up (at Performance Guitar, in Hollywood...the best)...a couple frets were lifting up off the fretboard, and the hardware was actually so well aged that it was at risk of 'freezing up'. Performance lubed things up and made sure it would all work professionally for years to come.. and as you remember, it actually looked even more authentically 'old'. Well... I am by a seaside town right now, and the little screws holding the pickup cover on are actually getting 'dew' on them, and have so much rust that the screw holes are disappearing, and look even more authentic than a Relic Strat. I guess this means this guitar is heading towards really becoming an old guitar sooner than expected... I am very happy with it.. rock on.

Johnny

Do you wake up some mornings and wish your name was Johnny Thunders? Cool name...but then I would lose all my relatives, and my friends would laugh at me across the street, and insist on making jokes about it. Nobody made fun of Elvis, with his 'King' nickname, or all the rhinestones, or even the mascara (that guys in the fifties were not wearing). So... along these lines... if you could play ANY guitar, and ANY style of music... what would it be? Do you have a secret longing to play the lap harp? How about getting a baritone guitar... or finally getting that semi-hollowbody guitar you've always wanted...and while your at it... call yourself Johnny Thunders... and maybe get that low-rider '64 that changes to 3 wheels (and lifts it's 4th wheel up in the air while moving...cool).

Burst

I am on an island in the middle of an ocean right now... thing is, everyone here seems to know that things are pretty good. Some people are bored with that... so apparently, there is a risk that people will ask for change here, just because it means change... but basically, life is good. So why mess with it? DO we do that with out guitars too? DO we buy a new guitar, tell everyone it's a tone monster, play it for a few months... and then get tired of it and think it's time for a change? I read about a guy who has an original 'Burst' Les Paul... 1960... apparently it plays wonderfully...and he keeps it in a safe, in his garage. He doesn't need the money... but says that anyone who offers him enough, he will sell. He also says he knows it is going up in the future, but still would sell for a good price. But... a few years after selling... would he be looking again to get ANOTHER burst? Fight the boredom thing...once you find a good guitar (or woman)...hold on to her.

Traderjoe

I put a deposit down.. on another new and inspirational guitar I want.. knowing another guy is interested in a Fender Strat I have...but the Strat comes back UPS, because the guy says the neck is not his thing...being the EBay person I am, I totally refund his money... no problems...'Send it back' I say... as fast as anyone can say 'Mocha-latte double skinny vente' (I have no idea what I just said) . Guitars are very personal, and it is almost impossible to buy through the mail, without this type of understanding between guitar players. These things are not toasters folks...and as far as I am concerned, there is no room for 'rug salesman' mentality. Also... if the guy calls you up two weeks later, and says the bridge fell off the guitar during a gig, and took some wood with it... work with them to 'make it right'. Yes... my next dream has to wait... but karma is served.

Nez2

Anyway, so my initial reaction that it might have been a real Monkee driving me downtown was definitely offset by the fear that I had someone else. Michael mentioned a movie that came out a few years ago about a manufactured band, and I mentioned how obviously, the mainstream idea is that the Monkees were 'manufactured' by Hollywood. So was Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, and other notables for my mind, who couldn't sing or compose. What do you do... did you do it well? That is all that matters. Errol Flynn came up... because he used to live across the street from me, long before I moved here. He always wanted to be a writer...and was slightly ashamed that he was only a 'matinee idol', who never really (as he apparrently said) 'Won a war single-handedly'. If we all live to be 100, we should realize that what we are and what positive effect we have on the world is all that really counts. I told Michael I was a jet pilot, and he told me a story of how once he was taught in a matter of hours to solo a Sopwith Camel Biplane...and they are 'mushy' on the controls at slow speeds. We spoke of Robby Krieger... and how impressed I was that the other 'Doors' had wanted to 'sell out' to Cadillac with one of their songs, but Krieger wouldn't do it. Not even for millions. (The Doors signed a pact at one point that any one of them could 'veto' the sale of their songs). Krieger eventually must have given in though, because I heard a Doors song on TV the other day... either in a commecial, or in a series... I told Michael I found this was disappointing. He said the Monkee's had a song in Shrek, and it had really helped them. He brought up Video production, and how California was the biggest producer of Videos, in the Valley. I mentioned that I would have to explain to my wife that a 'Monkey had helped me put my bag into the limo'...(cliche, I know)...then felt badly...mentioning as an excuse that when I fly jets I also have to carry bags for the clients, (besides fly 5 million dollar planes safely)... I asked him if Charlie Manson actually tried out for the Monkees, and was corrected that in fact Manson had tried out for the Beach Boys. I also mentioned a house I had seen recently, belonging to either Jan or Dean (of Jan & Dean), and Mike said it had to be Dean, because Jan died...then when we arrived, and it came time to get the bags out, he got my bag out for me (I couldn't find the latch). He also had told me he still lifts amps with his Roadies when on tour. He's a 'cool' guy to meet....

Nez

Met and spoke with Mike Nesmith yesterday. Also had Jury Duty. Live in LA, so rather than deal with the 1+ hour drive from West LA to Downtown the next day (for 7:30 roll-call)... I decided to get a towncar and stay overnight at the 'Standard'. Car came 8:15pm, and nice guy; 50-ish looking guy in a suit, tie, with short greyish hair, helps me get bag into car and drives me off. First off, I ask him if he has ever done Jury Duty... he says Yes... he did it four times, once only had to call on the phone only, another time had to go to courst, but not called on a panel, and twice more went in.. but not chosen...even though he really tried to get on a case, and be agreeable. He is driving, and we go by Mary J. Blige's house, and I happen to mention that the car outside waiting in the road is for 'Mary J. Blige', at which point he mentions he used to be in a band in the 60's. I say... ok.. which band (expecting the usual... sax player for 'Mountain'...actually, Mountain are great... try 'Blood of the Sun'). He says...'Have you ever heard of the Monkees?'... I say...'The NEW Monkees?'...he says... 'No, the old ones...'65,'66 etc. So now I am worried.. I am being driven around in a car by a man with a identity disorder. 'Which Monkee?' I ask... and he replies...'Mike Nesmith'. Ok, next great question from me (a man being driven around in a Towncar by Mike Nesmith)....'Why are you driving a towncar?'. As we all know, Mike Nesmith's mother was the 'Liquid Paper' inventor, so unlike other '60's bands, he has no need to drive a car for a living. He also invented 'MTV', is a great success in Video production, and is the originator of Country-Rock as a genre...etc, etc, etc. He replies...'My son lives in a Condo downtown, so my friend who owns the car company lets me take a car of his and do a run for him on the way downtown the same time'. Now I am becoming convinced it is Mike Nesmith...sure as heck looks like a slightly older version. Fit and healthy though for 65 years old... hmmmmm...old waves of doubt creep in again. Fate listens to you at all sorts of odd times... I prayed every night to get out of Jury Duty...still got it....meanwhile, three months ago, I told my session player friend on a whim (as we listened to Mike's song 'Joanne' on my iPod player)... 'Boy... if there is really someone I would like to meet..it's Mike Nesmith..but guess I never will.... I am still not telling him how he is one of my favourite musicians... because I am sure it is not really him. (Was there an episode of the Monkees/ Head, where Mike dresses up as a chauffeur). (I also later read about how he has been a prankster since childhood, and I also verified once I got done with jury duty, that this man was indeed Mike Nesmith). More tomorrow....and the end of the story...by the way... he is a really nice guy...

Nuts

What is your nut made of? Masterdon...tusk ivory... that slippery stuff they name that sounds like tusk but is something else...or...titanium? Which one sounds best? People swear by titanium... at least many artists. I feel it's not so much what it's made of (avoid wood)... BUT how well it is made. How well are the grooves for the strings spaced? Luthiers (from what I can determine) have a set of about 4 files they use to make those grooves in the nut, where your string should gently rest, with a perfect fit. That groove must not be too narrow, not too tight, not too low, and not too high...also, I once had a very well known luthier/ ex-masterbuilder make me a 5- string tele. Well... he didn't really make it... he RE-made it. He took an old Nocaster from 1951, which had a serial number in the 500 range... and stripped all the clear poly off it (it had been refinished...!!)...but he made all the grooves in the nut the wrong distance apart. Luckily... my local luthier pointed this out, and made me a new bone nut for my guitar...(which I sold a short time afterwards). So it's not WHAT it's made of... but HOW. (My favourite and ONLY choice is BONE... the real ones, like in legally harvested ivory).

Drummer Girl

I asked my girl what she thinks about my red Charvel guitar... she said 'I don't like it'. Of course I asked why? She replied...'It's coral red... that's a lipstick color, and it has a big phoney scratch on it'. Well... she said it in a nice way anyway. I asked her if she liked the birdseye maple neck... and she said 'nice, sort of goes nicely with the red... the red is not bad... but I still don't like the phoney scratche'.... by the way.. she's a drummer.