Empty Pockets
BadHairDayologist
Lots of people ask me about this weird white guitar in the back or corner of all of the pix of my collection
Is that a mustang or a jaguar? What kinda pickups are those? What year is it? Is it a Fender? What's it made of?
Well i'm not 100% sure about any of that but i'll tell you what i know.
The year i turned 19 i was basically a hippie. Not by politics or beliefs or anything but definitely by actions. You can probably find posts from me around this time and i bet you'll see what i'm talkin about. I had gained a certain appreciation for various psychoactive substances because what else is a guitarist in UTAH going to do with his spare time?
So i was in a more-than-celebratory mood because I had just won a green SG-X on eBay and was patiently waiting for it to show up. My friends and bandmates at the time were also trying to get their gear up as we had been jamming and writing really loose songs...sort of a 60's / 70's punk / hard rock vibe...somewhere between the Stooges, Zeppelin and Sabbath...so i'm experimenting with fuzz, slide, and vintage-style stuff. We were also experimenting with 60's / 70's-style clear liquid inspiration that day so we wanted to see what the local stores had to offer.
Is that a mustang?
There's some gutted white guitar on the back wall by the repair bench with a plastic bag full of parts hanging from it. I couldn't recognize it but the was a huge Led Zeppelin sticker on it so i asked the dude behind the counter what the story was. He said he'd bought it for $50 thinking he could fix it up but he couldn't figure it out. He said if i had $25 i could take it and a pack of strings. I said i'd need two packs.
DEAL
We must have teleported back to my house and soldering bench. To prepare for surgery i grabbed a pen and wrote the secret Satanic prayer you hear if you play one of the verses from "Stairway to Heaven" backwards all over the guitar. It's definitely there so don't even go there. Once the iron was hot it took me about 5 minutes to have 2/3 of the humbuckers working and 3/4 of the spots on the selector switch to work.
CLOSE ENOUGH FOR ROCK'N'ROLL..!!
She actually played really nice with .010's. The neck is too skinny for me and the body vibrates like plywood but the pickups are pretty sweet! Definitely a mini-humbucker / 60's or 70's kind of vibe. Awesome and unique tone. We probably jammed for two hours before the doorbell rang.
It's a dude from UPS...he's got a big rectangular monolithic box for me and wants me to sign. Umm alright man.
Open it up and there's my SG-X...all green and awesome. My first Gibson! Holy **** today is awesome!! We went back to the basement and jammed until the sun went down.
The white guitar with my unholy blessing on it mostly collected dust after that. It had a cool tone but it wasn't as nice as my Strat or my SG...the plywood body really hurt everything cool the nice pickups were doing. Eventually i did some research on it...found it it was originally made by the Welsen guitar company out of Italy. It says there aren't many that made it to the states because there was never a major distributor for them here...so who knows how it got here? They only came in sunburst finishes and mine ended up white. If it could tell some stories i bet it would.
I eventually gave it to my friend Taylor for his birthday -- he was getting into guitar and i wanted to encourage that. He gave it to his little sister, who's friends with my little sister, who traded her first guitar (cheap starter Ibanez) to get the white Zeppelin guitar back! She brought it down here with her orange Cyclone and baritone Jaguar when she moved down here for school last year...then she changed her mind and moved back to Utah with her Fenders, and left Icarus here.
Now she has .013's and is set up for slide in open E. I use her to play "When the Levee Breaks" and that's about it...but she sounds perfect for it. Thin and plinky yet still full and lush.
I'm thinking of having my friend who builds custom guitars copy the body for me...cut it out of a nice piece of alder or something. If we could get the original maple neck to fit then the thing is salvageable but as is now, the frets are really bad and the inlays are falling out! Really just an old relic of a guitar made by some random guitar company, only in production during the 70's and never a really big deal to any big rock stars but good enough for myself and my art :smokin:
Is that a mustang or a jaguar? What kinda pickups are those? What year is it? Is it a Fender? What's it made of?
Well i'm not 100% sure about any of that but i'll tell you what i know.
The year i turned 19 i was basically a hippie. Not by politics or beliefs or anything but definitely by actions. You can probably find posts from me around this time and i bet you'll see what i'm talkin about. I had gained a certain appreciation for various psychoactive substances because what else is a guitarist in UTAH going to do with his spare time?
So i was in a more-than-celebratory mood because I had just won a green SG-X on eBay and was patiently waiting for it to show up. My friends and bandmates at the time were also trying to get their gear up as we had been jamming and writing really loose songs...sort of a 60's / 70's punk / hard rock vibe...somewhere between the Stooges, Zeppelin and Sabbath...so i'm experimenting with fuzz, slide, and vintage-style stuff. We were also experimenting with 60's / 70's-style clear liquid inspiration that day so we wanted to see what the local stores had to offer.
Is that a mustang?
There's some gutted white guitar on the back wall by the repair bench with a plastic bag full of parts hanging from it. I couldn't recognize it but the was a huge Led Zeppelin sticker on it so i asked the dude behind the counter what the story was. He said he'd bought it for $50 thinking he could fix it up but he couldn't figure it out. He said if i had $25 i could take it and a pack of strings. I said i'd need two packs.
DEAL
We must have teleported back to my house and soldering bench. To prepare for surgery i grabbed a pen and wrote the secret Satanic prayer you hear if you play one of the verses from "Stairway to Heaven" backwards all over the guitar. It's definitely there so don't even go there. Once the iron was hot it took me about 5 minutes to have 2/3 of the humbuckers working and 3/4 of the spots on the selector switch to work.
CLOSE ENOUGH FOR ROCK'N'ROLL..!!
She actually played really nice with .010's. The neck is too skinny for me and the body vibrates like plywood but the pickups are pretty sweet! Definitely a mini-humbucker / 60's or 70's kind of vibe. Awesome and unique tone. We probably jammed for two hours before the doorbell rang.
It's a dude from UPS...he's got a big rectangular monolithic box for me and wants me to sign. Umm alright man.
Open it up and there's my SG-X...all green and awesome. My first Gibson! Holy **** today is awesome!! We went back to the basement and jammed until the sun went down.
The white guitar with my unholy blessing on it mostly collected dust after that. It had a cool tone but it wasn't as nice as my Strat or my SG...the plywood body really hurt everything cool the nice pickups were doing. Eventually i did some research on it...found it it was originally made by the Welsen guitar company out of Italy. It says there aren't many that made it to the states because there was never a major distributor for them here...so who knows how it got here? They only came in sunburst finishes and mine ended up white. If it could tell some stories i bet it would.
I eventually gave it to my friend Taylor for his birthday -- he was getting into guitar and i wanted to encourage that. He gave it to his little sister, who's friends with my little sister, who traded her first guitar (cheap starter Ibanez) to get the white Zeppelin guitar back! She brought it down here with her orange Cyclone and baritone Jaguar when she moved down here for school last year...then she changed her mind and moved back to Utah with her Fenders, and left Icarus here.
Now she has .013's and is set up for slide in open E. I use her to play "When the Levee Breaks" and that's about it...but she sounds perfect for it. Thin and plinky yet still full and lush.
I'm thinking of having my friend who builds custom guitars copy the body for me...cut it out of a nice piece of alder or something. If we could get the original maple neck to fit then the thing is salvageable but as is now, the frets are really bad and the inlays are falling out! Really just an old relic of a guitar made by some random guitar company, only in production during the 70's and never a really big deal to any big rock stars but good enough for myself and my art :smokin:
