Underwater guitar with The Great White Shark Song

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Yeah, I know he's miming! Nevertheless, rather him than me!

G L Wilson

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

A Little Bit Country, a Little Bit Rock 'n' Roll

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By our guest blogger, Alexis Bonari

In the world of country, where acoustic instruments have ruled for decades, electric guitar, mandolin and banjo are inching their way into this predominantly unplugged arena that frowns upon change. Since the seventies, bands such as Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers have ridden the line between country and rock, creating their own type of sound that caught on like wildfire by using electric instruments. This sound influenced country's rebels like Waylon Jennings and Jessi Coulter, angering many country fans while creating a brand new breed of music and followers.

Ticking Off the Old Timers

Some of the country music elders have been outraged by artists like Shania Twain for her use of electric guitar, overproduction and a sound that wasn't considered "country” thanks to her (at the time) husband, Mutt Lange, who produced albums for groups such as Def Leppard and AC/DC. Mutt and Shania fused her country sound with electric instruments and a belly-baring rockin' look that exploded up the charts and sold out stadiums around the world. Reigniting country brought millions of new fans into a world that had become stagnant and paved the way for newcomers who wanted to incorporate electric instruments into their music but were too afraid to be shot down.

Metal Catches On

Just as electric guitar has made its mark on country, eighties metal hair bands were also influenced by country's acoustic sound and the effect that a simple acoustic guitar and a microphone had on their audience. Poison's "Every Rose has its Thorn” and dozens of other metal bands had their signature acoustic song that made them millions and brought tears to their fans.

Breaking Down Walls

Other top bands in their own right like ZZ Top and Heart, have just recently been embraced by country's hottest rising stars, expanding country's acoustic sound into a whole new arena of electric instruments. Taylor Swift who was featured on CMT's Crossroads with Def Leppard is a great example of why country rock is hotter than ever thanks to a little electricity!

Bio: Alexis Bonari is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She is currently a resident blogger at onlinedegrees.org, researching areas of online degree programs. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.

Photo: The American country singer/guitarist Taylor Swift, with her Taylor acoustic guitar made of Acacia koa wood, at the Maverick Saloon & Grill in Santa Maria, California, June 16, 2006 by Dwight McCann / www.DwightMcCann.com.

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

Gorgeous guitars from The Creamery

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I've been meaning to feature The Creamery on this blog just about all year, but was waiting for the website to go live, which I believe it did last month... but then, I got side-tracked as I so easily do these days!

The Creamery are based in Manchester in the UK, and is the operation of Jaime Campbell who builds one-off custom guitars of the bolt-on neck, slab-bodied variety. Naturally this means Telecasters and Esquires as you might expect, but also some other body shapes too including Explorer (The Alleyway) and, my own favourite, a slab-bodied Jazzmaster (This Year's Model) inspired by Elvis Costello's guitar.

Jaime likes to use recycled woods and has posted on Facebook and Twitter about raiding skips to claim a piece of timber that someone else has just thrown away. The Fenchpost (pictured top left) for example, is an Esquire-type guitar with a body built out of an old pine fence post and which still has the nail holes proudly on display as a feature. I think it looks fantastic.

Another Tele-type has a body built from a butcher's block (The Butcher's Block) which not only gives it a unique appearance but is common sense, making use of a quality timber product which is quite frankly wasted on a mere chopping board.

I should also mention that Jaime also handwinds his own The Creamery brand scatterwound pickups, which are available to buy on their own without a guitar attached.

I can't wait to see what's next for The Creamery. I believe a Prince-style Telecaster is in the works.

G L Wilson

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

1971 Micro-Frets Spacetone

guitarz.blogspot.com

We already posted about Micro-Frets guitars on this blog, an interesting company born in the 60s with quite an innovative spirit, and recently revived. Here is their Spacetone model, their most famous guitar I guess (saw it in the hands of Carl Perkins and Dave Gore).

It's a hollow-body with a characteristic F-hole, a Bigsby trem (that is strange since they usually use their own model), P90 pickups, a double pickguard, cool double dots fretboard inlays and of course the superb Micro-Frets headstock.

bertram

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

Bodge job alert!

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Bill found this Strat body with an alarming pool extension on eBay, and comments "I think someone may have been trying something like Clapton's Mid Boost circuit. Tragic."

Well, I'm not so sure. It looks to me like someone wanted somewhere to hide illicit substances. (And yes, I do remember the story about a Squier Strat impounded by Customs because they found its body to be made from cocaine.)

Either that, or someone was trying to make one of those easy-to-smash guitars.

G L Wilson

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

1963 Höfner 173

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We didn't have a German vintage guitar here for ever! Time is right to show this Höfner 173 with 3 pickups (humbucker-like but probably single coils with big covers - something not unusual at the time) on a strat shaped body and an ubercool trem system.

That's now that I start to rant: "Why don't they do all these cool trems anymore and we have to choose between 3 boring models when 40 years ago every guitar maker would create his own system - they worship all that is wrong in vintage and despise all that is right!"

brm, brm

bertram






Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

Fender Performer guitar and bass - forgotten classics?

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Could the Fender Performer by the last real original design from Fender before they decided instead to produce a myriad of subtle variations of the same vintage designs?

The Perfomer was produced for only one year between 1985-1986 by Fender Japan during that strange period in Fender's history in which there was no USA guitar production happening.

The Performer was originally designed as a bass (the guitar came later) by John Page, who has commented that the original intention was that it would be an Elite version of the Jazz Bass! The angular body shape was in fact inspired by the Fender Strat - flip one over and note the shape that the flat surface makes.

The guitar does look like an after-thought, it must be said. The small-ish body and 24-fret neck mean that there's a smaller than usual space in which to accommodate the two humbuckers - added to which the offset slanted design of the pickups themselves mean that they end up being positioned very closely together. However, a coil-tap does mean that at the touch of a button this guitar can go from fat humbucker tones to a crisp sharp Strat-like sound.

Other interesting features include the rubber grips on the volume and tone controls, and the Swinger-esque headstock shape.

A forgotten Fender classic? Possibly. Examples have been selling on eBay for $1000 and upwards.

(Pictured above: Fender Performer guitar and Fender Performer bass both in auctions about to finish on eBay very soon! There is also a sunburst example of the guitar for sale in the UK at a not unreasonable price of £599.)

G L Wilson

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

Zemaitis Diamond custom

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A cliché I regularly read on the guitar blogosphere, is the claim that the new made-in-Japan Zemaitis guitars are not the real things, that trying to prolong the work of craft-master Tony Zemaitis is pointless and almost blasphemous, and by extension that these guitars are probably just bad instruments (but if you dig a little bit, you find people saying that handmade original Zemaitis guitars were sometimes botched and badly finished, looking much better on photos than is real, a little bit like Wandre's).

Like most guitar lovers, I never played a Zemaitis guitar, never even saw one in real (neither original or Japanese) since they are not guitars you easily find at your local music shop, but I think that they are some the most superb guitars ever, and I imagine that all the pro musicians who play or endorse the new Zemaitis instruments don't do it only for their good look.

The one you can see here, a Zemaitis GZ500S Diamond is actually from the GZ series - one could call it the budget line of Zemaitis if they weren't over 2500 €, handmade, with engraved gears, abalone binding and inlays - built on contract by law-suit era copy specialist and old-timer guitar maker Greco (so good at cloning guitars that a part of the company became Fender Japan). It has upgraded pickups and pots and just one look at it causes in me a feeling of achievement and perfection (together with the sour feeling that I'll never have enough money in my life to buy such a guitar...)


 bertram

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

of Dead Weather, Grestches, photos and blogging

guitarz.blogspot.com

A few months ago, a Guitarz reader pleasantly remarked that what we do here is easy and dishonest, since we just lazily browse the Web, steal a guitar pic here or there, add a few lines and claim the whole thing ours.

So last week I was very proud of myself when I decided to go for guitar hunting in the Real Life (the lack of interesting guitars on the Internet lately is not getting better!), and for the very first time took a small digital camera to a rock concert. And since it was a concert of the Dead Weather, I though that I would come back with great photos of two of the coolest guitars out there, the Gretsh custom white Bo Diddley (played by Alison Mosshart) and Billy Bo Jupiter Thunderbird (played by Jack White).

Unfortunately I'm a much better photographer with a big good camera, steady and in daylight, than in a middle of a jumping crowd with a quick succession of complete darkness, powerful spotlights straight into my lens and moving blue lights... Of the more or less 100 photos I took that night, these are the less bad, sorry... And when the show stopped, the roadies came right away and took the guitars away, so no chance to shoot them at rest either!

By the way, the concert was brilliant, even better than I expected, and I can tell you that I'm not an easy audience!

bertram

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

Oh, here we go again...

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Oh dear! Has this eBay seller been living under a rock? He claims that this assault rifle guitar is "... the most original guitar you will ever find!"

Biggest. Cliché. Ever.

(And, no, it's not a one-off or a rarity of any kind, it's identical to this cheapy K-tone.)

What next? Another toilet seat guitar?

G L Wilson

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!