The Fool SG | The Painted Player

The Painted Player is pretty well-known in guitar circles for their faithful replicas of Eric Clapton's The Fool SG. For added authenticity each guitar is handpainted with paintbrushes to mimic the legendary psychedelic artwork on the original The Fool SG made famous by Clapton when he was with Cream.

If you have been following my Les Paul Quest series, my good buddy Sherman recently decided to spring for Painted Player's The Fool SG replica while he sorted out his decision on which Les Paul to eventually get.   

The Fool SG by The Painted Player

The Painted Player offers their Fool custom paintjob on any number of SG-style guitars that they might have on hand at a particular time. 

Which means that the customer has a variety of guitars to choose from depending on their preference and budget. 

The Fool SG - closeup of handpainted fantasy graphic and Maestro Vibrola tremelo, chrome metal cover removed.

A great idea, since the serious player or collector will not have to settle for a cheapo guitar, while the player on a budget, or someone who just wants to hang the guitar on the wall, can get a lower priced alternative.

Closeup of headstock artwork. Note period accurate wide headstock and bell trussrod cover.

When Sherman placed his order with The Painted Player, he had four guitar options to choose from:

Tokai SG75 -- a brand-new Japanese-made Tokai 61' re-issue SG, this is the top-of-the-line Tokai SG model, highly accurate and featuring an ABR bridge, PAF humbuckers and Kluson machine heads 

1992 Orville 61' Re-Issue SG -- from The Painted Player's new-old-stock collection of guitars. Made in Japan by Gibson's Japanese Custom Shop from 1988-1998, the Orville is a faithful replica of the '61 SG featuring an ABR-1 bridge and PAF humbuckers.


1988 Burny SG -- another Japanese-made guitar from The Painted Player's new-old-stock collection. Apparently, the Burny SG's from the 80's are highly sought after by collectors of Japanese-made replicas.

1992 ESP Navigator SG 320-LTD -- also made in Japan and one of the closest Gibson SG replicas, second only to the 1992 Orville.

Sherman decided to go with the 1992 ESP Navigator which is the guitar you see in these pics, which he has generously allowed me to share. Thanks Sherm!

Artwork on the back of The Fool SG

He also went with the worn neck finish option, something which Clapton himself had done to his original The Fool SG, to minimize finish stickiness on the back of the neck.

Interestingly, he had ordered the guitar with the back of the neck fully-painted, but it had somehow gotten misdirected by the postal service in the UK who sent it back to The Painted Player. 

The guitar received its worn neck finish -- normally an option that comes with an extra charge -- as a sort of apology for the delay and the many days of anguish while the guitar was lost in the post. Talk about customer service!  

Worn neck finish option on The Fool SG

Read more about Sherman's Les Paul Quest Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3

Jeff Beck To Release New Album!

Jeff Beck has never been prolific with his studio releases --  it's been 7 years since 2003's eponymously-titled Jeff.   The upcoming release of Emotion & Commotion on April 13 will undoubtedly come as a welcome surprise for fans hankering for the Strat-meister's new material. 

Can someone please stand up and say, "It's about bloody time!"

And it's an ambitious project too, for one of rock's most influential guitarists.  Together with his usual stellar band of Vinnie Colaiuta, Jason Rebello and Tal Wilkenfeld, Beck also performs with a 64-piece orchestra on several cuts.  Also making a guest appearance on two tracks is sultry-voiced pop songstress Joss Stone.  That should ensure some decent radio airplay.

Before embarking on his world tour for Emotion & Commotion that will include South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, Australia and the US, Beck will also be playing a few shows with Eric Clapton in London, New York, Toronto and Montreal in February. 

Quite a leap for Jeff Beck who by all accounts prefers to be holed-up in his garage building hot-rod cars or slicing carrots in his kitchen.

Greg Koch Plays 'Cause We Ended As Lovers

Hailing from Milwaukee, Wisconsin (behind the Cheddar Curtain as he likes to describe it), Greg Koch's playing is a gristly stew of influences.

Take a dollop of Jimi Hendrix, a spoonful of Eric Clapton, a dash of Chet Atkins, a peppering of BB, Albert and Freddie King, and a heaping helping of Albert Lee, and you have a killer gumbo that doesn't even begin to describe Koch's indescribable style. Or wry sense of humor.

In this in-store guitar clinic vid -- Koch is a clinician for Fender Instruments and Hal Leonard -- he demonstrates his succulent volume swells starting at 2:59 in the style of Duane Allman and Roy Buchanan before launching into a Jeff Beck-style rendition of 'Cause We Ended As Lovers at 3:31.

Koch's sheer control of the instrument is indisputable. Check out his Beck-approved finger-style approach to the main melody at 4:00 before going back to pick-mode briefly at 4:25 to execute some pick pinch-harmonics. I especially dig his quirky flurry of triplets at 5:19.

Koch has several books and DVDs out on Hal Leonard -- guitar instruction at its finest. Check them out here.

Bob Bradshaw -- "I Like To Think That My Systems Don't Have A Sound"

Bob Bradshaw's Custom Audio Electronics has been building rack and pedal control systems for more than two and a half decades.

Picking up where Paul Rivera left off -- Rivera was designing early pedalboard systems in the late 70s before deciding to concentrate on amp modifications -- Bradshaw upped the ante with his footswitch controller and patchbay routing systems, allowing guitarists to interface their vintage Fuzz Faces to their rackmounted, studio-quality Eventide Harmonizers.

And by virtue of the controller patchbay system, any combination of pedals and effects could be recalled with the tap of a single footswitch. With the proliferation of rackmounted guitar effects and preamp devices in the 80s, Custom Audio Electronics took off.

Bradshaw became the go-to guy for studio stalwarts Buzz Feiten, Steve Lukather, Mike Landau, Paul Jackson Jr., Dann Huff and Tim Pierce who also happened to take their rack systems along when touring, with Bradshaw himself tagging along on occasion as guitar and road tech for Feiten, Landau and Lukather.

In this vid, Bradshaw gives credit to Steve Lukather for introducing many of his 'rockstar employers' to the Bradshaw system.

At a recording session with Eric Clapton, Lukather apparently let Clapton check out his Bradshaw system which led to the guitar legend ordering a rack system of his own. Soon Bob was shipping out systems to David Gilmour, The Edge, Yngwie Malmsteen, Eddie Van Halen and Peter Frampton.

And legend has it that when the guitar tech for Prince custom ordered a system, the 'Purple One' tried it out at a soundcheck and decided he preferred having his Boss pedals at his feet instead.

The '90s saw a backlash against rackmount systems with the resurgence of analog pedals and a trend towards lo-tech and lo-fi. Blame it on the grunge era.

While he never stopped customizing effects systems, Bradshaw also launched a line of Custom Audio Electronics Amplifiers -- which were actually designed by John Suhr of Suhr Guitars, a topic for another article -- and recently teamed up with Jim Dunlop on their MXR line, licensing his designs on the MC401 Boost/Line Driver and the MC402 Boost/Overdrive pedals.

The Spiritual Sayings Of Carlos Santana -- Part II

My first article on The Spiritual Sayings Of Carlos Santana proved somewhat popular. I guess Carlos' nuggets of wisdom struck a chord in quite a few people.

In light of that, here are some more.

This time I've divided them into two sections. The first are from a 1974 interview he did around the time of the release of Love, Devotion, Surrender with John McLaughlin. The rest are from a 1999 interview he did after recording his multi-award winning record, Supernatural. It's interesting to see how Santana's perspectives have evolved over 25 years.

1974

"A lot of times, what I hear and what the Supreme hears are two different things."

"Sometimes I find myself living in the illusion that I've got to do it the way I hear it. But when I do that, it doesn't come out right, it sounds too thought out."

"The most natural thing on earth is your heart, your soul, because it rarely goes out of tune with God. What goes out of tune is your mind and your body."

"I am the string and the Supreme is the musician. And that's all I am, because I go out of tune just like a string goes out of tune."

"I've got a long way to go before I can be in any kind of environment and still keep that oneness with the Supreme, so I don't start swearing and trying to be stupidly proud."

"Sometimes I'm not aware I can do some of these things on my guitar, because in reality I'm not doing them, they are being done through me, which is one of the highest places anyone can reach."

"For Leonardo daVinci to reflect all his artwork, he had to get his chops out before he could try to reflect all that perfection the Supreme gave him."

"There's only one king, man, and that's the Supreme. And when he plays through you, according to your capacity, it's like music from beyond, and that's what I'm hungry for."

"If I'm not practicing my guitar and my technique, I'm reading certain types of books which make me constantly aware of how much conviction, surrender, devotion I have to have so that I don't go out of tune. So when I play, all those doubts and wrong notes don't come into the picture."

"Some music just goes right over you, and you start yawning. John Coltrane's music used to do that to me. It's so heavy it's like eating a big meal. But after a while I got hungry for it."


1999

"I had only one concern when making my new record (Supernatural). Would Jimi Hendrix like it if he were here?"

"It's important for me to appease Jimi and Wes Montgomery because I play for them too."

"We are multi-dimensional spirits dwelling in the flesh, solely for the purpose of evolution."

"I don't see myself playing black music or white music. I play rainbow music -- all the colors are there."

"Like Miles -- you know when you hit that note, you don't want to breathe until you finish with it. Miles, Peter Green -- there are very few people who can make you hold your breath until that note is ended. You get goosebumps."

I love musicians who make you want to laugh and cry at the same time. When they go for it, you go with them, and you don't come back until they come back. There are not many players who can consistently do that. Potentially, we should all be doing it."

"From Miles you get the alchemy of making 50,000 notes into five. But with those five, you shake the world."

"You don't have to be Jimi Hendrix or Charlie Parker -- you can get it done your own way. God made the world round so we can all have centerstage."

"The secret of life is that I have validated my existence. I know that I'm worth more than my house, my bank account, or any physical thing."

"Once you validate your existence, you have the wind in your sails -- where do you want to go?"

"When I hit that note -- if I hit it correctly -- I'm just as important as Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, or anybody. Because when I hit that note, I hit the umbilical cord of anybody who's listening."

"When you hit a note like that people say, "What kind of guitar is that? What kind of speaker are you using? What kind of strings?" No, man. It's not all that -- it's the note."

"These are the ingredients for being a complete communicator: Soul, heart, mind, body, cojones. One note."

"Late at night, if I want to check in with my internal Internet, I load the tape recorder, get some nice tones, and play."

"The only thing that I have is my tone. That's like my face. Your tone is your fingerprint and your personality. I learned by listening to T-Bone Walker and Peter Green, so I have a tone."

"Attitude is as important as notes. You learn not to be intimidated. You learn to respect and find your place -- to complement."

"There's cursing and praying, and all that language is part of music. A lot of my best solos remind me of when my mom used to scold me, 'Dit-doo-dup-dat-doo-doo-bah!"

"When you get older you either get senile or become gracious. There's no in-between. You become senile when you think the world short-changed you, or everybody wakes up to screw you. You become gracious when you realize that you have something the world needs, and people are happy to see you when you come into the room."

"Whether you've got a green mohawk or a suit and tie, it's still the same. Are you saying something valid. Are you contributing, bringing new flowers that we haven't seen in the garden?"

"When you think, 'I should hang up my guitar and be a dishwasher,' listen to your other side: 'No, you too have something they need'."

Buy Carlos Santana CDs and DVDs Here!

Seymour Duncan -- Pickup Tonemeister

Seymour Duncan started playing the guitar in bands in 1963, but it was meeting legendary guitarist Les Paul that fired his interest in guitar electronics. Little did he know at the time that, like Les Paul, his own name would also become part of electric guitar history.

Duncan also befriended the late guitarist Roy Buchanan, turning up at his gigs to hear the Tele-master in action. But because Duncan was underage, he would hide behind the bar at Buchanan’s gigs.

Stumped by the tonal difference between Buchanan’s ’53 Telecaster and his own ’56 model, Duncan started writing to Bill Carson at Fender. Carson was a gigging western swing guitarist and fellow Telecaster player who worked with Fender on an ad hoc basis, acting as road-tester for Fender’s new guitar and amp products.

Duncan made several important discoveries by tinkering with his guitars and trying to make improvements.

For example, frustrated with the microphonic squeal from the pickups on his Telecaster, he disassembled the pickup on an older guitar and found paraffin wax encasing the windings. Paraffin wax, he discovered, held the windings of the pickup solidly in place, virtually eliminating microphonic feedback. Duncan had found a critical element that he was to faithfully implement in his own line of pickups later on.

One night during a gig, the lead pickup on his Tele suddenly stopped working and, out of necessity, he rewound the pickup using a record turntable the following day. Experimenting with the different tones that different windings could produce he started rewinding pickups with a machine he had built, using a sewing machine pedal to control the speed of the turns.

He inadvertently set the machine to wind in the opposite direction, an error which led to another discovery – reverse winding also reversed the pickup’s polarity and when used in combination with a regular wound pickup both became hum-cancelling. This was an important discovery especially when applied to single-coils.

In 1968 Duncan took a job at a television station where he managed to meet and talk guitars with celebrity guitarists like Glen Campbell, Jerry Reed and Cal Collins.

A four-year stint in England followed, where he immersed himself in studio recording at night while doing repair work at the Fender Soundhouse R&D and Repair Department during the day for Peter Frampton, Marc Bolan, The Who, Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix and Jeff Beck.

Upon returning to the States, he began manufacturing pickguards, bridges and knobs and selling them to Schecter, Charvel and Mighty Mite who were pioneering the guitar replacement parts industry.

In 1976 Duncan moved to Santa Barbara to set up a pickup rewinding service which soon blossomed into a replacement pickup business, hot on the heels of a certain Larry DiMarzio.

As mentioned above in the Seymour Duncan ad from 1979, Duncan’s business was also based on creating pickups built to his customer’s specifications, in addition to selling his own stock line of custom pickups.

Feeling that he had more to learn, Duncan started consulting with Leo Fender, Seth Lover, the inventor of the Gibson humbucking pickup, and Doc Kauffman, Leo’s early business partner and fellow tinkerer.

Seymour Duncan keeps meticulous records of every pickup he has ever taken apart and scrutinized – electrical readings, number of windings, layer patterns, magnet types – and he keeps one of each of these pickups in the company’s archives for future reference.

As he puts it, “I’ve just looked at a lot of small details that other people might have overlooked.”

Buy Seymour Duncan Pickups Here!

Bill Connors | Defining Jazz-Rock Guitar In Return To Forever

Like every teenaged guitar player of his generation, Bill Connors grew up listening to Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton. By his own admission he was a ‘Rolling Stones glutton', and was soon learning every Keith Richards solo note for note.

His musical tastes soon evolved and he began listening to jazz -- Miles Davis, Bill Evans and John Coltrane became a preoccupation. A momentous epiphany came when he happened to hear one of Django Reinhardt’s recordings. At that point he decided he didn’t want to be a rock guitarist anymore.

Starting out his music career in the San Francisco jazz scene in his early 20’s, Connors was soon playing in groups with bassist Steve Swallow and saxophonist John Handy.

And when Chick Corea decided to steer his group Return To Forever towards a decidedly electric jazz-rock direction, he chose 24-year old Bill Connors for the incendiary role of lead guitarist. Connors recorded one album with the group, the groundbreaking Hymn Of The Seventh Galaxy.

Citing creative differences with his bandleader, Connors remained with Return To Forever for only about a year. With Chick starting to direct Connors more and more, the young guitarist felt that he no longer had any control in the music -- even over the form and direction of his solos. A committed Scientologist, Corea was also in the habit of requiring the members of his band to fill out forms and chart out graphs to rate their own performances every night.

In many ways, Bill Connors has not received his due. His forays into classical guitar on the ECM label following his departure from Return To Forever and his subsequent return to electric fusion with his own Bill Connors Trio in the late 80’s somehow did not bring him the recognition he deserved.

Stanley Clarke once stated, “When you talk to guitar players that followed the jazz-rock movement, a lot of guys mention John McLaughlin first and Bill Connors second”.

I couldn’t agree more. In my opinion, Connors paved the way for his successor, Al DiMeola, in Return To Forever. Connors created a sound in the band where none existed before. In the process, he helped further define the role of the electric guitar in the world of jazz-rock and fusion.

Perhaps when Connors reunites with his former bandmates Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke and Lenny White on 2nd September 2009 for one show at the Hollywood Bowl things might start looking up.




Buy Bill Connors CDs Here!

Zemaitis Guitars by Greco

The late English guitar-maker Tony Zemaitis made a name for himself by building custom guitars for the likes of Eric Clapton, Ron Wood, Spencer Davis and George Harrison.


Originally a cabinet-maker, Zemaitis developed a keen interest in guitar building. And because he couldn't afford a first guitar, he built his own.


His guitar-making hobby soon turned into a full-time business. He was building each and every guitar himself and at his peak he was building around 30 guitars a year, with customers having to wait about a year to receive their custom instruments.


He produced 3 broad categories of instruments -- a basic standard (that he sold for 175 British pounds in the '70s); a medium-grade instrument with better quality woods and hardware and finally his top-grade custom model with all the trimmings.



And trimmings were probably the most obvious outstanding feature of his instruments.


Famous for his pioneering use of hand-tooled, engraved metal faceplates, they became an almost standard feature on his guitars. Custom instruments were further adorned with mother-of-pearl and sterling silver. With the exception of the tuners, he made all the hardware on his guitars himself, machined out of solid blocks of aluminum alloy.


For pickups he favored Gibson humbuckers, or, if the customer requested them, Fender single-coils. Each pickup received extra-shielding before installation to minimize noise.


Ebony fingerboards were de facto. Body woods on his top-line models were usually mahogany but he also used rare Honduran cedar which more often than not had a prior life as wall wood-panelling! Finishing was complete after no less than 40 coats of varnish.



Under license from Tony's estate, Greco has been producing a line of Zemaitis guitars for a few years now. In cooperation with Danny O'Brien, the metal engraver who worked closely with Zemaitis in producing the ornate designs on the original guitars, Greco is carrying the torch and making faithful reproductions of the originals.


And being Japanese, they are being made cosmetically perfect in every way. And probably sound just as good, with a consistency of tone far greater than the originals.

I have a friend who owns an original Zemaitis, and I've had the chance to see a couple more up-close. The original Zemaitis guitars were not perfect. In fact they had a decidedly 'home-made' quality to them.


Imperfections were everywhere -- roughly-sanded spots and tooling scuffs in the finish, engraving imperfections on the metal faceplate and trimmings and somewhat rough-hewn hardware.


You might say that Tony poured his heart and soul into every instrument he made.

Famous Guitar Cameos

Here's a song-by-song listing of famous (and not so famous) guitar cameos. I've always been interested to see the kind of musical fingerprints my favorite guitar players leave on the work of other musicians.

Sometimes these collaborations work, sometimes not. Usually they do.

It's by no means a complete list so do drop me a comment if you know of any more I might have left out -- there must be dozens, if not hundreds more:


Let's Dance (David Bowie) -- Stevie Ray Vaughan

This Is Not America (David Bowie) -- Pat Metheny

Western Vacation (Western Vacation) -- Steve Vai (using the moniker Reckless Fable for legal reasons)

Stories To Tell (Stanley Clarke) -- Allan Holdsworth

Ellipsis (Pat Martino) -- Joe Satriani

Clowns On Velvet (Frank Zappa) -- Al Di Meola (only bootlegs of this live recording exist)

Chinese Fire Alarm (Kittyhawk) -- Robben Ford (from a rare out-of-print album -- great solo with extremely cool phrasing!)

Monmouth College Fight Song (The Yellowjackets) -- Robben Ford

Attack Of The 20lb. Pizza (Vinnie Colaiuta) -- Mike Landau

Beat It (Michael Jackson) -- Eddie Van Halen

Eyesight To The Blind (from the soundtrack for 'Tommy') -- Eric Clapton

While My Guitar Gently Weeps (The Beatles) -- Eric Clapton (Clapton is uncredited on the song due to legal reasons)

Peg (Steely Dan) -- Jay Graydon (this is actually more of a session job by Graydon than a guest cameo, but what the heck, it's still a classic)

All Along The Watchtower (Jimi Hendrix) -- Dave Mason (on 12-string rhythm guitar)

Mediterranean Sundance (Al Di Meola) -- Paco De Lucia