It’s been 50 years since Frampton Comes Alive! reached the top of the charts. When it did, on April 10, 1976, Peter Frampton felt like he was on top of the world.

The live album became a breakthrough beyond anything he had imagined — an instant FM radio staple that sold millions of copies. Its iconic cover photo, showing Frampton mid-performance with his “Phenix” Gibson Les Paul Custom, ended up on bedroom walls across America, cementing his status as a teen idol nearly a decade into his career.

But it didn’t take long for the high to shift. Almost immediately, Frampton began wondering how he could possibly follow it — or even come close.

“I felt like I had lost before I started the next part of my career,” the guitarist told Billboard. “Before there was nothing to compete with. Now, I felt, ‘I’m competing with Peter Frampton.’”

He had sensed early on that the recordings were special. Shortly after the tour wrapped, he and bandmates Bob Mayo (keyboards) and Stanley Sheldon (bass) gathered at New York City’s Electric Lady Studios to review the tapes. (Kiss were also in the building working on their 1976 live album Alive!, and even used some of Frampton’s gear while sweetening their tracks.)

As the engineer rolled the tape, the impact was immediate.

“Me, Bob Mayo and Stanley just sort of got knocked backwards as soon as it came on, because the energy that came from the tape just leapt out of the speakers,” he says. “I started laughing. I just said, ‘Oh my God, we’re good!’”

Radio followed suit. Released on January 15, 1976, Frampton Comes Alive! generated three hit singles — “Baby I Love Your Way,” “Show Me the Way” and “Do You Feel Like We Do,” the latter two showcasing Frampton’s distinctive combination of an electric guitar and a Talk Box.

The record surged to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 by early April, where it remained for 10 nonconsecutive weeks, ultimately becoming the best-selling album of 1976. Over time, it would surpass eight million copies sold, its appeal enduring well beyond its initial wave.

Success brought its own momentum. Frampton returned to the road to promote the album even as it still sat in the Top 10. By the final shows, exhaustion had set in — along with a growing sense of pressure about what came next.

“Everyone was saying, ‘Oh man, this is so good. You must feel so great,’” he recalls. “Yeah I do, but I’ve got tomorrow to deal with. Hell, I’ve got to do a studio record to follow this up. And in my mind I’m not proven in the studio, like I am now. I’m stamped ‘The Live Guy.’”

Within weeks, he was back in the studio cutting I’m in You, released June 3, 1977. The pace of expectations, however, was relentless — and Frampton felt it.

“That was probably the least favorite period of my life,” he says. “The pressure was so great. There was absolutely no need to do I’m in You then and there. The biggest mistake was just not shutting down at that point.”

The album was hardly a failure. It went Platinum and, at the time, became his most commercially successful release. The title track reached No. 2, marking his highest-charting single.

But it never carried the cultural weight of Frampton Comes Alive! — and the landscape had already shifted. Punk and new wave acts such as Elvis Costello, Talking Heads, and Television were reshaping rock’s center of gravity.

Against that backdrop, I’m in You felt out of step. Even its pin-up style cover — Frampton shirt open, posing directly to camera — read like an attempt to extend his teen idol moment rather than evolve beyond it.

Looking back, Frampton has pinpointed that era as a turning point. Speaking at The Art of Music event at New York City’s Met Museum, hosted by Warren Haynes, he reflected on the aftermath.

“After the I’m in You record came out — which I didn’t want to make, let alone release — I realized that it was time to take stock, and a lot of things happened there,” he said. “Money was going astray by the hundreds of thousands.

“And so I needed to sort all that out. And that’s when I sort of stopped working and basically just started writing on my own and getting ready for something that was to come.”

Now, Frampton is preparing to release his new studio album Carry the Light, written with his son Julian. It arrives May 15, 2026, but he chose today to release its debut single, “Lions at the Gate,” featuring Tom Morello.

He says he’s clear eyed about what success means today.

“I have no expectations of it doing anything,” he tells WIVB. “But Julian and I love it, so that’s all that matters.

“I enjoy the creative process more now than I ever did,” he added. “I don’t have to do anything, which is so great.

“I should’ve thought about that back then. But the pressure was on.”

Of all the guitars Robert Fripp has played, one stands out: the now-iconic 1959 Gibson Les Paul Custom he played across King Crimson’s classic works and his collaborations with artists that include David Bowie.

In 1967, a young Robert Fripp responded to a newspaper advertisement from Bournemouth-based brothers Michael and Peter Giles. They were looking for a singing keyboardist for a new project. Fripp could neither play keyboards nor sing, but he applied anyway and got the gig. The resulting band, Giles, Giles and Fripp, established an iconic songwriting partnership that laid the groundwork for prog-rock progenitors King Crimson.

A year after that advert went to print, the trio released their only album, The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles and Fripp. Its hazy blend of jangling psychedelic pop, jazz, and classical music failed to find an audience, but it made a fan of a businessman by the name of Angus Hunking, whose generosity would make it possible for Fripp to buy the ’59 Custom.

“I bought it when Giles, Giles and Fripp were just about to become King Crimson,” Fripp tells Guitar World of the Les Paul’s origin story. “King Crimson were lent £7,000 by a businessman called Angus Hunking. He took an interest in us, and I believe £2,000 came in cash in a briefcase.”

Soon after, Fripp and Michael Giles, with whom he would form King Crimson, were shopping for a guitar in London’s West End.

“We went to a music shop on Shaftesbury Avenue,” Fripp says. “In the window was this Les Paul for £400.

“I asked for a cash discount. The shop assistant, a young man I disliked because of his attitude, said, ‘I could phone up Eric Clapton, and he’d come and buy it.’ And I thought, Then why haven’t you phoned him already?”

Fripp called the clerk’s bluff from a mile away.

“This young man was lying to me, and I didn’t like him,” he quips, before haggling a deal for £380.

According to the Bank of England’s inflation calculator, £380 in 1968, the year King Crimson formed, is equivalent to around £5,900 (approx. $8,000) in today’s economy. It wasn't an insignificant amount of money, even if it only made a small dent in their briefcase. Realistically, though, it would sell for far more than that were he to pop it on eBay.

“I went online today, and I found a pristine model the same as mine, advertised at $139,000,” Fripp gasps. “And that was an instrument without provenance.”

As he explains to GW, the guitar proved to be a workhorse. It featured on the band’s first seven records, breaking sonic ground again and again between 1969’s In the Court of the Crimson King and Red five years later. It would also be used to record his “celestial” guitar parts on David Bowie’s “Heroes,” which has sold 2.3 million copies worldwide.

The album’s title track has gotten a new lease of life in recent months thanks to its inclusion in the smash TV series Stranger Things.

Beyond that, the guitar would also be used during his collaborations with synth wizard Brian Eno.

After decades of toil, his staple guitar caught a break when a second ‘59 LP, bought in New York in 1978, took its place. Had he not stood his ground against that snarky guitar shop clerk, Robert Fripp’s story might read rather differently.

In related news, Fripp has laughed off rumors that King Crimson were back in the studio, while his interesting comments on Jimi Hendrix’s guitar playing have piqued the interest of many.

When Gibson announced a special Murphy Lab reissue of Eric Clapton’s 1958 Gibson Les Paul Custom last month, it didn’t quite paint the full picture.

Sure, it was Slowhand's favorite and famed triple-humbucker Les Paul for quite some time, but it's also a guitar that Albert Lee has owned since 1979, and under his care, it's passed through some rather distinguished hands. Clapton may have put the guitar on the map, but it’s far more traveled than that.

Lee often frequented the guitar shop, Selmer, on London’s Charing Cross Road, which is where his tale with the Les Paul begins.

“Every Saturday I'd come up on the train to see what was in Selmer's," Lee says. "So they opened up this guitar case, and there's a brand-new Les Paul Custom,” he recounts to Guitar World. “I thought, ‘Yeah, I’ll join your band!’" he says with a laugh.

“I played that guitar throughout the early ’60s. And then this guy persuaded me to sell it to him. He pestered me and pestered me. I let it go, and I regretted it for a long, long time.”

Fast forward to 1978 and Lee is the fresh face in Eric Clapton’s touring band.

“I remember the first day, chatting with Eric. For some reason, I had a picture of my old guitar with me, you know, and I showed it to him,” he says. “I told him how much I missed that guitar. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I've got one of those at home somewhere.’”

Lee had forgotten about their conversation almost as soon as he’d had it. But it stayed at the forefront of Clapton’s mind.

“The next day at rehearsals,” Lee remarks, “the roadie walked in with this big case and opened it up, and it's Eric's Les Paul Custom for me to play.

“I guess it was mine,” Lee says with a smile.

“From there on, I used it on the whole tour. Eric never asked for the guitar back. He was happy that I was enjoying it and using it onstage.”

It turns out the guitar has a very prestigious history.

Under Clapton's ownership, it was featured on Disraeli Gears , where the guitarist wielded it to create his "woman tone" by switching to its bridge pickup and rolling down the tone control. The Custom was also played at countless Clapton-related shows in the 1960s and '70s, where it made history with other famous artists of the day.

“From Paul Kossoff to Eric and John Lennon and George Harrison playing it,” Lee quips. “I’d no idea Eric used it with Derek and the Dominos [where he employed it for slide guitar]. Great bit of history there.”

Clapton can't recall what happened to the guitar after Disraeli Gears. He thinks it ended up in Kossoff's hands when Free and Blind Faith, Clapton’s post-Cream supergroup, toured together. He says the two groups jammed together “quite a lot.” In the end, Kossoff got the guitar and used it on Free's debut album, Tons of Sobs.

The Les Paul wound up back in Clapton’s possession in time to be used for his cameo with John Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band at the Toronto Rock n’ Roll Revival in September 1969.

From one Beatle to another, the Custom would star when he and George Harrison toured with Delaney and Bonnie, later in 1969.

While researching the guitar’s patchy but fascinating history for Gibson’s new replica, Michael Doyle found evidence of Harrison playing the guitar onstage — with Clapton on Harrison’s Stratocaster.

Clapton then used the guitar for his prominent slide work on Derek and the Dominos' Layla. The Custom was chosen because Clapton didn't like its skinny frets.

If you can't get on with a guitar because the frets aren't right for you, what do you do?" asks Doyle. "Well, set it up for slide.”

The guitar’s history post–’78 has been a little less star-studded. After Clapton had removed the pickguard and pickup covers, he restored the guitar to its former glory and found it simply too good to share. Until, of course, he gave it away to Albert Lee.

The Les Paul Custom responsible for the solo on Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights has sold for £21,500 (approx $27,500) at auction. 

The figure vastly surpasses the estimated £10,000 it would accumulate at the auction at Gardiner Houlgate in the UK. Before fees, the winning bid clocked in at £17,000 (approx $21,824). 

The 1974 Les Paul Custom was played by Ian Bairnson, who had a broken arm at the time of tracking the chart-topping hit. 

Bairnson passed in 2023, aged 69, with Kate Bush taking to her website to remember his talents.   

She said: “We lost touch after we worked together on my early albums but I remember he had a lovely, warm smile and he played the inspired solo on Wuthering Heights with a broken arm. He was still wearing the cast! He was in a lot of pain but soldiered on and like all great artists, he truly suffered for his art.” 

Auctioneer Luke Hobbs had said the price “was quite deserved,” despite the fact that modifications to the guitar had impacted its value. 

“The guitar itself – in original condition – is worth probably £5,000,” says Hobbs. “With the modifications that it had, probably more like £3,000-4,000. That guitar has done significant work over the years.” 

The guitar sports a cherry sunburst finished maple veneer on a mahogany pancake body, and an ebony fretboard. There's a buckle rash patch on its back, with “further dings and marks” noted by the auctioneer. 

According to Gardiner Holgate, Bairnson’s modifications include replacement Tom Holmes Vintage Style humbucker pickups with aftermarket coil switches.  

However, its desirability at auction has surpassed expectations. 

“I have been quite blown away by the response to the sale of his collection [which includes 12 of his guitars],” Hobbs told Antiques Trade Gazette. “In this same auction, we are offering the ex-Whitesnake guitarist Bernie Marsden’s collection as well as guitars owned by Eric Clapton, Gary Moore, Peter Green, and many more.

“The reaction to Ian Bairnson’s collection has so far surpassed interest in some of these mammoth names in the guitar world. I think that says it all!”

It's fitting that the guitar would exceed expectations at auction when the song it was used to track itself exceeded initial expectations. 

Released in 1978 as a tribute to Emily Brontë's classic gothic novel, it became the first UK number one written and performed by a female artist. It topped the charts in six countries in total, including Italy and Australia. 

Bairnson bought the guitar in 1974, and it quickly became his go-to six-string. It featured throughout his work with his band, Pilot, as well as with the Alan Parsons Project and Kate Bush's first four studio albums.  

The guitar sold with its original hard case, featuring a ‘Pilot’ stencil logo.  

For more info on the guitar, visit Gardiner Houlgate.

This interview originally appeared in the August 2010 issue of Guitar Player.

When Albert Lee takes the stage with his buddy and former bandleader Eric Clapton at the 2010 Crossroads Guitar Festival, he’ll be celebrating his 50th year as a professional guitarist. Like the warp-speed solos he spins so effortlessly, Lee’s musical odyssey has an unusually long arc. 

In addition to being a founding member of the pioneering late-’60s country-rock band, Head Hands & Feet, Lee backed Clapton for five years in the late ’70s, and has toured and recorded with the Everly Brothers, Emmylou Harris, the Crickets, and Joe Cocker. He’s also a veteran of countless sessions in London, Nashville, and Los Angeles.

As a young man in his native England, Lee was inspired by Jimmy Bryant, Cliff Gallup, Scotty Moore, and James Burton to forge his own white-knuckle picking style from elements of hot-rod country and jump-jivin’ rockabilly. Voted “Best Country Guitarist“ five times in the GP Readers’ Choice Awards, Lee continues to thrill festival crowds in the U.K. and across Europe with his band, Hogan’s Heroes, and also plays in Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings.

Lee’s peers are among his most ardent fans. In the introduction to Country Boy: A Biography of Albert Lee, by Derek Watts, Clapton writes, “He is a great, great player, fluid, lyrical, and free – like a jazz musician, but with country scales; like Django, but with a bluegrass past.“ Emmylou Harris once said, “When St. Peter asks me to chronicle my time down here on Earth, I’ll be able to say, with pride if that’s allowed, that for a while, I played rhythm guitar in a band with Albert Lee.“

Few guitarists can boast a half-century of musical activity, much less burn as Lee does in Live at Stazione Birra: Rome, a concert DVD he taped with Hogan’s Heroes. At 66, Lee’s hair is now white, but he still plays with the adrenalin-fueled passion of a teenager.

You witnessed the birth of rock and roll in England. What was it like to be a guitarist then?

“Well, it was a challenge to find a decent instrument. We were still struggling after World War II. I started playing around 1957, and back then there was an embargo on imported luxury goods in Britain. It wasn’t until 1960 that Fenders and Gibsons started to come into England in fair numbers.

“I borrowed guitars from school friends for a while, and eventually got a Hofner archtop. In 1959, I traded it for a solidbody with three pickups and a tremolo. It looked like what Buddy Holly was playing, so I thought, 'Yeah, that’s the real thing.' But it wasn’t – it was made in Czechoslovakia. Back then we didn’t know what a Fender was.“

How did you make the leap to professional gear?

“In about ’61, a big shop called Selmer’s on Charing Cross Road, in the West End of London, began carrying Gibsons from the Super 400 on down. I really wanted a Gibson at that point, because Scotty Moore was such a big influence. I’d study these guitars, trying to figure out which one I could afford. I wound up buying a Les Paul Custom.“

Were you playing rockabilly by then?

“Yes, though I didn’t have an unwound third string until around ’61, after Eddie Cochran came over to England and spread the word about what guys were doing in the States with an unwound third. 

“Sets with plain thirds weren’t available at that time in England, so I’d buy a set of Gibson Sonomatics plus an extra first string. I’d throw away the sixth string, move the remaining five down, and make up the difference with the extra first string. The first rock-and-roll sets to come into England were Fender 150s, gauged .010-.038. I used those for a long time.“

When did you embrace the Telecaster?

“Back in ’63, I bought a second-hand Tele and it changed my life completely. The Tele had a really wiry sound compared to my Les Paul Custom, so I immediately began to approach music differently.“

In what way?

“At the time, I was into Scotty Moore, with his country and rock-and-roll mix, and Cliff Gallup, who was more of a swing player. I’d heard James Burton, but what he was doing with all those bends was a little alien to me until I got a Tele of my own. When I realized I could get that James Burton, string-bending sound with a Tele, I thought, 'Wow, this is really cool.'“

You’re known for your superb flatpick-plus-fingers technique. Did you always play that way, or did you develop this hybrid approach later?

“I’ve always picked that way because I was trying to copy what I’d heard Scotty Moore play with Elvis. By the early ’60s there were a couple of guys in London using a thumbpick like Chet Atkins, so I tried a thumbpick for about five minutes. I realized it wasn’t for me, because the real fast picking I was working on came a lot easier with a flatpick. Those thumbpickers sounded really good, but they couldn’t play what I was doing, so I just persevered with the approach I already had.“

From your Live at Stazione Birra: Rome DVD, it’s evident you’ve mastered the art of playing flowing lines that span an entire cycle of a song’s progression. This is very different from B.B. King or Eric Clapton, who play short phrases and then pause to hold a note.

“And I don’t know if that’s a blessing or a curse. I have a pretty fluid technique, and it can run away with me. If I do fall over or make a mistake, I’m able to take it somewhere else. It’s like going on a cross-country run: I’m able to negotiate most things that come my way, but I often think I should sit back and survey the landscape, and pick and choose more. 

“I started to learn that playing with Eric. When I was in his band, I thought, 'This guy is really milking the music for all it’s worth. What he’s doing is relatively simple, but it fits amazingly well.' Now I try to think that way when I play.

“My knowledge of the fretboard came through working out Cliff Gallup solos. He was great with a tremolo bar too, so I started out using the tremolo on my first couple of guitars, but then got away from it for many years. I rediscovered it when Music Man started offering tremolos on my signature model guitars.“

Give us an overview of the Albert Lee model’s evolution.

“Originally, Music Man built it as a prototype in the mid ’80s. They had this wild body shape that looked so cool. I played the prototype to death – I just loved it. Eventually, [Music Man’s] Sterling Ball said, 'We’re going to put your guitar out.' 

“The one I’d been playing had three single-coil, Alnico II pickups Seymour Duncan designed for me. The bridge pickup had a metal plate underneath it, somewhat like a Tele rear pickup, so it has a bit more bite than a Strat pickup in that position. We explored a Tele-style pickup suspended from a metal bridge plate – I still have one of those prototypes – but eventually settled on the three-pickup, Strat-like configuration, because I liked the way that guitar sounded so much.

“The model first came out with a pinkburst finish and fixed tailpiece. I think it originally had a six-bolt neck plate. That changed to a five-bolt plate, which eventually became recessed – a nice touch – and then the neck heel was rounded off to make playing up high more comfortable.“

Has your signature guitar always sported those custom Seymour Duncans?

“Oh yeah, we haven’t changed them, although the guitar is now also available with three soapbar pickups, and recently they’ve added a dual-humbucker version to the line.“

How did the tremolo model come about?

“Sterling told me Music Man wanted to build a tremolo-equipped model and asked how I felt about it. I told him that was fine, although I wasn’t using a tremolo unit. But when I eventually tried one and discovered how well the unit handled, I became a convert. Now I much prefer it to the fixed bridge model.

“The tremolo comes with three springs, which I adjust slightly from the factory setting. I like true vibrato – the ability to lower and raise the pitch – so I set the tremolo unit to float by slackening the springs just a bit. I also put the tremolo bar in a vise and bend it so it sits more flush to the body. I like the bar to be within reach of my pinky while I’m picking.“

On your concert DVD, the trem comes back into tune really well, even after you’ve wrenched it.

“Oh, it’s just amazing. I drop that bottom E down to an A – sometimes even E an octave below – and it just comes right back. The bridge sits on two pointed pivots. It’s a wonderful design.“

And this guitar comes with locking tuners too?

“Yes, and they’re great. If you’d asked me before I’d tried them, I would have said I prefer traditional tuners, because the locking ones add some weight. But the locking tuners keep the whole guitar in tune, despite all the dive bombs I do. And it’s not just one guitar, each one I play works just as well.“

Tell us about your amp, strings, and picks.

“I’ve been using a 100-watt Fender Tone Master head and 4x12 cabinet for at least six or seven years. For strings, I like Ernie Ball’s Regular Slinky set, 010 to .046 gauges, but with a custom third string. 

“For quite a few years I used a .016 instead of the stock .017, but these days I’ve been using a .015 and I don’t notice a significant difference in tone. Music Man still sends me guitars with a .016 third. Maybe I should tell them what I’m doing [laughs]. I use Ernie Ball picks – heavy for electric, medium for acoustic.“

You’re known for using delay to create cascading runs, as in “Country Boy” on your 1979 solo album, Hiding, and “Sister’s Coming Home” and “Luxury Liner,” which you recorded with Emmylou Harris. How did you discover this technique?

“When I met Jerry Reed in ’68 or ’69, he told me you could get great delay tricks with an Echoplex, but didn’t explain how. It wasn’t until I picked up an instrumental album by Jim and Jesse, a bluegrass duo featuring Jesse McReynolds on mandolin, that I heard someone using echo to add notes to a line. It sounded amazing, so in ’71 or ’72, I brought an Echoplex back to England, but it took me two or three years to stumble upon how you create that effect. 

“I was actually playing too many notes. You have to play a very strict four notes to the bar and slide the playhead until the repeat comes in a beat-and-a-half later. This way the delay falls between each note you’re picking. To make it work, you have to set the delay for only one repeat and keep the echo at the same volume and tone as the original note.“

What do you currently use for delay?

“Eventually I switched from the Echoplex to a Lexicon PCM 42, but these days I use a Korg A3 – it’s my favorite effects unit. In fact, I’ve got five of them. It’s a little tricky to get timed echo on the fly with an A3 because you have to program the delay time. It’s a lot easier with a pedal or a unit that has a variable delay knob on it.“

Looking back over five decades of music making, what highlights stand out?

“Playing with the Crickets is one; another highlight is when I first came to the States with Head Hands & Feet. I went out with Joe Cocker for a while, and that was fun. Playing with Emmylou Harris and taking over from my hero, James Burton, was a huge turning point. Emmylou introduced me to a whole new American audience.

“Obviously, I had a great time playing with Clapton for five years, and I also loved the 20 years I performed with the Everly Brothers. It was absolutely amazing to be involved with the Concert for George at the Royal Albert Hall in London. And, of course, playing the Crossroads Festival. That’s a pretty big show to be involved with, and I’m happy to be doing it again this year.“

Few musicians manage to sustain a career for half a century. What’s your secret?

“I see some guitarists who had a lot of success during a certain period, yet now they sit back on their laurels. Every six months they might rehearse a band for a tour, but they’re not playing all the time and it shows. I like to think I’m playing as well as I ever did, and the reason for that is I haven’t really stopped. 

“Sometimes I’ll play these horrible little bars for $50 or whatever, and the reason is I’m hoping it would be that extra special gig I always search for. I keep looking for that perfect night onstage.“

Following up last month’s Certified Vintage debut, Gibson has unveiled the second batch of five rare guitars from their groundbreaking program. The firm’s latest curation includes instruments from the ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s, highlighting Gibson’s decades-long history of building iconic electrics.

Among these are a ’58 Les Paul Custom with three PAF humbuckers and a factory-original B7 Bigsby; a ’61 Les Paul/SG Custom similarly featuring a trio of PAFs and vibrato unit; a ’78 Wine Red L-5 CES (the game-changing L-5 celebrates its 100th anniversary this year!); and an eye-catching ‘85 Designer Series Custom Graphics Flying V.  

Also available is a prototype of Gibson’s first 1959 Les Paul Standard recreation – the Heritage Series Les Paul Standard 80 – boasting the serial number A 0001.

To find out more about these stunning six-strings and the Gibson Certified Vintage program, Guitar Player spoke to Mark Agnesi. We asked him how the idea came about and what this unique service offers customers.

“We have so many vintage guitar lovers on staff, including myself, Mat Koehler, Cesar Gueikian and others,” Mark told us. “When we started to build the Gibson Garage, we wanted to put some cool stuff on display in the Vault. We’re almost two years into that now and everyone’s seen that cool stuff. So we thought, Let’s let it go and get some new cool stuff in. Also, we get so many calls from people asking us about their vintage guitars that it all just morphed into the idea of selling vintage guitars – our history.

“We knew we had a cool idea that would be groundbreaking for the industry. First off, we’re the only company that can say it’s Gibson Certified Vintage. But more importantly, we’re the only company that can put a lifetime warranty with a vintage guitar, which is a first in the history of the vintage guitar business. You have that dual confidence as a buyer that not only is it coming directly from the source, but you also get a lifetime warranty with it.”

Here, Mark tells us about the second batch of five stunning guitars from the Gibson Certified Vintage program…

1958 Gibson Les Paul Custom

“This is an original 1958 Les Paul Custom 'Black Beauty' with a Bigsby. This guitar has lived in the Vault since day one, so anybody who has been in the Vault has likely seen and/or played this guitar. It has three PAFs and is all original aside from a refret. It has medium jumbo frets on it that were put on by our Repair & Restoration team. It also had a new nut cut in the process.

“We’re at the point now where some of this stuff is over 60 years old and a refret is probably the best thing that can happen to a lot of these guitars. If it’s an absolutely mint, collector grade guitar then the chances are it doesn’t need a refret. But it’s like a cap job on an old amp, or a neck set on an old acoustic – if you’re talking about value, what’s it really worth to you if you can’t play it? So I don’t really look at a refret as a detractor – as long as it’s a good refret by someone who knows what they’re doing, I see that as adding to value.

“The back of the neck is great. There’s all this wear in the cowboy chord area and thumb wear right by the twelfth fret. It’s like the original owner played cowboy chords then soloed in E.”

1961 Gibson Les Paul SG Custom

“It’s funny to look back and think about how expensive sunburst Les Pauls from 1958 to 1960 are now. They weren’t huge sellers at the time. It wasn’t until years later when Keith Richards, Mike Bloomfield, Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck started playing them that they became desirable. The more modern, double-cutaway SG was the silver lining of those poor [single-cutaway/sunburst Les Paul] sales. Thank god that all happened, because the SG was born out of it all, and it’s the only Gibson solidbody design not to have gone out of production.

“When the Les Paul Custom switched from single- to double-cutaway, Gibson switched the ‘tuxedo’ finish from black to white. The gold hardware is such an iconic look on this guitar. It’s famously associated with Sister Rosetta Tharpe – she’s the first who comes to mind – and Jimi Hendrix later played an SG Custom. It’s a classic.

“This one lived in the Gibson Vault, but it’s time to let it back out in the world again. It has the original 'Fretless Wonder' frets on it. The Customs were traditionally always 'Fretless Wonder' guitars, even when they were brought back in the late ‘60s. We didn’t start putting bigger fret wire on until the mid ‘70s. So even the [20th] Anniversary Randy Rhoads-style Customs [from 1974] are still 'Fretless Wonder' guitars. That’s what Les liked!”

1980 Gibson Heritage Series Les Paul Standard 80 Prototype

“By the early ‘80s, you start seeing Gibson reissues. The ‘70s era was over and the vintage guitar market had already started, with ‘50s and ‘60s models becoming more valuable. We were getting back to the original designs. Everybody realized there was something there.

“The Heritage 80 was our first attempt at recreating the ’59 Les Paul [Standard]. From a spec standpoint it was a nice first attempt, but it’s nowhere near as accurate as what we’re doing today. But it was the first attempt, and this guitar is serial number A 0001. It’s stamped 'prototype,' which to all intents and purposes makes this the very first ’59 reissue that was ever made! It’s a very cool collector’s piece that I’m sure someone will fall in love with.

“For whatever reason this guitar had the pickguard removed at some point, so it’s shipping without one. Our current [repro] ’59 ‘guard won’t fit (because we make them historically accurate now!)

1978 Gibson Custom L-5 CES

“I don’t know why, but this guitar got set aside in the Gibson headquarters and it’s been sitting here for over 40 years. It’s not what I would call NOS (there are some NOS guitars here) but this one shows a little bit of wear. It was played but, for some reason, it was stuck back in the case and put back on the rack where it’s lived for 40-something years.

“I started looking through some stuff and opened the case and was surprised to find this really cool Wine Red L-5 CES. We don’t have a lot of hollowbody guitars in production currently and we thought this Kalamazoo era guitar would be a cool thing to offer up.

“The Wine Red finish looks great – it really shows off the grain. There’s a three-piece maple neck with a lot of figuring on it and the finish makes it all jump. It looks really beautiful. The Wine Red is dark, but you can clearly see the grain through it.”

1985 Gibson Designer Series Custom Graphics Flying V

“I love these guitars. The first music store I walked into as a kid had these all over the wall. In the mid ‘80s MTV era, this store looked like a Scorpions music video with all these Designer Series Explorers and Flying Vs on the wall. There’s a variety of graphic styles and this is what we call the Style 30.

“This is an NOS guitar. This guitar was never sold. It still has the warranty card, the arm for the Kahler [vibrato] and all the stuff in the pocket of the original case. For whatever reason, this guitar was put aside. I have a few of these that will trickle out over the next several months. I mean it’s too much fun to not share these.

“It’s NOS, but it’s been sat here for almost 40 years now, and there is some lacquer checking on the guitar. But it’s an unsold Graphics Flying V from 1985 – I mean, how cool is that? Where else can you buy an unowned 38-year-old guitar? Those things just don’t come up.”

All Gibson Certified Vintage guitars are sold via the Gibson Garage in Nashville, TN. Call (615) 933-6000.

Select models will be available for purchase here.

Think of Joe Satriani’s guitars and probably the first thing that comes to mind are his signature Ibanez JS models. With their aerodynamic rounded-edge shape, built-for-speed neck, high-powered pickups and eye-popping finishes, they are about as modern a design as any.

But that doesn’t mean Joe doesn’t appreciate or have plenty of use for a solid vintage instrument. In fact, he has a whole collection of them at his beck and call.

A few years ago, he was only too happy to open his vintage vault for Guitar Player and give us a little peek inside. And it’s a good thing he did, because some of these drool-worthy models might not be around for long. “I’ve been aggressively shedding vintage guitars for the last 10 years or so,” Satch tells us. “I used to have about 30 or 40, and I like to use them alongside my Ibanezes to round out the tones on the albums. But lately I’ve been trading and trading, and selling and selling, because there’s a lot I have that other people would probably love to play too.”

He laughs. “So I don’t know, maybe you should be talking to Neal Schon or Joe Bonamassa about this.”

Below, Joe shares with us the stories behind five of the finest vintage pieces in his unique collection.

1969 Gibson Les Paul Custom

“I had this dream of finding that perfect Les Paul Custom for a long time, and it has always eluded me. But I picked this one up and my hand just fell in love with the neck. And it has that weird Les Paul Custom sound. I don’t know why they sound so unique, but they just don’t sound like regular Les Pauls.

“We did something crazy with it – we took out the original pickups, put them safely in a box, and then I had [longtime guitar tech] Gary Brawer put a [DiMarzio] Fred in the neck and a [DiMarzio] Satchur8 in the bridge, and we did the full Jimmy Page wiring. The guitar sounds amazing. I wound up using it on [Shapeshifting] on ‘Falling Stars’ and ‘Here the Blue River.’”    

1966 Fender Electric XII

“Years ago, I was always saying, ‘I’ve gotta get that electric 12 that I’ve been looking for.’ I had a Rickenbacker at the time, and it was just killing me. You couldn’t play the thing – you had to keep stopping to retune.

“So my friend Mike found me this Fender, and I remember him telling me, ‘Hey, this is what Jimmy Page actually used on “Stairway to Heaven.”’ That’s a terrible thing to tell someone who’s buying a guitar, because it clouds judgement, right? [laughs] But this turned out to be a guitar I’ve used a lot.

“Sometimes I’d put it on the left channel and the Rickenbacker on the right, and together they make a beautiful sound.”

1958 Fender Esquire

“This one’s my favorite. I’ll never get rid of this guitar. Chris Kelly, who used to work at Ibanez, found it for me back in ’92, I think. He called me one day and said, ‘I found this Esquire. You have to have it!’ And I purchased it over the phone. This is before there was Reverb and eBay and stuff like that. [laughs]

“It wound up on The Extremist album right away, and over the years it’s been on just about every album. I’ve used it clean, dirty, with slide, for power chords… It’s a beautiful guitar. And again, it was like the neck was personally made for me. I don’t know how they did that back in 1958!”

1948 Martin 000-21

“I was looking for a groovy acoustic. I had borrowed a ’64 Gibson Hummingbird, but I wanted something a bit more delicate for fingerpicking. So I walked into Real Guitars in San Francisco one day and there was this beat-to-hell 000-21.

“It was the antithesis of the beautiful 000-28 Eric Clapton had just showed up with on Unplugged. But this guitar wound up on so many records. It’s on ‘Starry Night’ [from 2002’s Strange Beautiful Music] and ‘Love Thing’ [from Crystal Planet]. It’s a beautiful-sounding guitar, and super light. I mean, the thing is like paper now – old and dry, and very expressive.”

1964 Fender Precision Bass

“I bought this at Guitar Center in San Francisco right before I started working on [1989’s] Flying in a Blue Dream. And this is the bass I used on the record. It wasn’t very expensive. I think it was about a thousand bucks at the time – which probably was more than I should have paid, especially if you see the back of it. Someone tried to wipe the finish off and gave up halfway through, so it looks real bad. [laughs]

“But I just wanted a ‘player’ instrument. And this P-Bass has been on so many of my albums over the years. Even bassists that I’ve invited to play on records have wound up using it for at least one song. And that’s because it does ‘the thing’ – that great mid-’60s P-Bass thing that we all love.”

***The following appeared in the September 2019 issue of Guitar Player***

The Cult released their fourth album, Sonic Temple, in 1989. Powered by Billy Duffy’s bigger-than-Beethoven guitar themes and Ian Astbury’s mystical, soaring lead vocals, the record went Platinum by winning over both traditional hard rock fans and alt-rock/pre-grunge fans alike.

As I head into SIR Hollywood to interview Duffy, the band’s publicist calls to say, “The bad news is that rehearsal is running at least an hour behind.”

The good news is I’ve been invited to watch the Cult run through hits such as “Sun King,” “Fire Woman,” “Sweet Soul Sister” and nearly every other song from Sonic Temple.

The spectacle is a bit surreal. I’m receiving a private concert of one of the greatest crossover albums in hard rock history.

Duffy stays tethered to his rig on stage left until the very last note of rehearsal, switching back and forth between Gibson Les Pauls and his famous signature-model Gretsch Falcons.

He looks very healthy. Later, I tell him he appears far younger than his years. “You flatterer!” he replies. But I insist I’m being sincere and press him to share what, if anything, he’s been “doing right” over the years. “I don’t know,” he says. “I used to be quite fond of a drink, but I quit drinking a couple of decades ago.

“I thought, I’ll stop for a bit, and that bit became longer and longer. Being sober sort of snuck up on me, and I think it’s had a long-term benefit.”

The first time we met, I was doing a little reality TV gig for NBC, coaching an actor on how to become a better guitar player. We had spoken to a few pro guitarists, and they all gave us advice on technique or practicing. But when we ran into you on Sunset Blvd., you simply told us, “Get a cool guitar.”

Yes, I’ve been pretty consistent with that advice – get a really cool guitar, one that makes you feel proud and one that helps you find your own sound.

I think it’s a British thing. Growing up in Britain, my background was very blue collar and working class, and we weren’t drowning in a sea of wealth, so I never really had to worry about what car I was going buy. It was the small things – cool clothes, a cool guitar or other accessible things – that would make you stand out.

It was an outward expression of how you saw yourself, because things were generally quite grim for most people in England in the ’70s.

You, of course, have become so famously associated with the Gretsch White Falcon that you now have your own signature models available.

I got my original Falcon from a guitar shop in London – we ordered it from America – and now people love to see that guitar.

I think it gets a bigger round of applause than I do! It was the end of the ’70s, punk was kind of fading, and we were all looking for guitars that would give us different sounds because you couldn’t really outdo what heroes like [the Sex Pistols’] Steve Jones or [the Clash’s] Mick Jones were doing with a Les Paul. So I got into the Gretsch look.

Plus, I wanted something that behaved a little differently, spatially. I needed to make as much noise as possible with a guitar. A good example of the Falcon sound is the guitar on “She Sells Sanctuary” [off the Cult’s Love album].

I’ve actually retired my main Falcon. It has become a museum piece, so to speak. The guitar in itself isn’t that valuable but it’s got a lot of history to it. The version I’m playing now is a Stephen Stern Masterbuilt replica, and it’s even better than the original.

How much White Falcon did you play on Sonic Temple? You’re holding a Les Paul on the cover.

By the time we got to Sonic Temple, we had Bob Rock on as producer and the idea was to mix elements of the Love album – which was a little more open and psychedelic sounding – with the harder, more simplistic rock sound of Electric. So there’s a lot of Les Paul on the album, but quite a bit of Gretsch, too.

AC/DC did that in a great way, with Malcolm Young on the Gretsch and Angus on the Gibson, and in one sense that’s what I was going for, but with a lot more layers. I had always wanted to make a fully explored, unashamed rock album with lots of overdubs, and it was finally time.

It’s funny – Ian and I saw the project differently. To him, Sonic Temple was psychedelic, and we were doing Disraeli Gears. To me, we were doing a hybrid of Queen, Bad Company and Mott the Hoople, with a bit of punk rock in there.

Sonic Temple was one of Bob Rock’s first big records. Any standout moments you recall from when you were tracking guitars with him?

Yes, “Sweet Soul Sister.” In those days we were somewhat indulgent with ourselves financially, so I spent a whole day doing the solo on that song, and, finally, we arrived at something we all knew was great.

But somehow, even though Bob is super meticulous and never wipes anything, that solo got lost, and I couldn’t manage to recreate it. All we had was a rough mix, which was on a cassette tape Ian had been listening to in order to work on his vocals.

So Bob finally just grabbed that cassette and somehow brought the solo section from it – with the backing band tracks and everything – back into the main session. The actual guitar solo on “Sweet Soul Sister” is from a cassette tape!

Honestly, when it came to doing the leads on Sonic Temple, there was a lot of chopping – a lot of proper old-school razor-blade-and-tape stuff. I had never seen myself as a fast or technically gifted guitar player, but because of where the band was headed, it was starting to be required of me.

I kind of needed to be fast-tracked so that my lead guitar playing caught up with the sound we were going for. So a few of the solos were cut together.

Many of your big songs – “Fire Woman,” “Sanctuary,” “Love Removal Machine,” “American Horse” and “Sweet Soul Sister,” for example – are centered in D. I vote that you be made the honorary king of the key of D.

I was very proud that we had, I think, nine Top-40 singles England, and most of them were in the key of D.

A lot of my stuff was the drone thing. I like the discipline of moving up and down the G string while the D is ringing below, like on “Sanctuary” or “American Horse.”

People go, “Why don’t you just play all those notes in one place on the neck using different strings?” but that doesn’t have the same effect.

It’s said that handling success can be just as hard as handling failure. What did you learn from the experience of Sonic Temple blowing up and suddenly catapulting you guys to a much higher level of fame?

One thing is that you never really know when you’re at your peak. Only in retrospect do you realize that something was your peak. You always think your next album is going to be the biggest one. There’s no pamphlet or brochure that explains how it’s going to go. You just have to hold on for the ride.

We had a sage manager back then named Howard Kaufman, and he said, “Be careful, because now you guys each have ‘fuck-you money.’” And he was right. If you’re lucky enough to get success – and some of the cash and prizes that come with it – it becomes an issue, because then people can be like, “Well, I don’t need this. I’ve got money. I don’t need to put up with your nonsense.”

You have to get through that phase as a band. Your overriding love and passion for music has to win out over the other stuff.

Are there any hilarious onstage Spinal Tap-style moments you remember from the first Sonic Temple tour?

The biggest Spinal Tap moment I’ve ever seen came a couple years later, and it happened to somebody else.

We were playing soccer stadiums in Europe with Metallica, and Megadeth were on the bill too. The stage had a triangular ego ramp that went way out into the crowd, and Metallica let Dave Mustaine use it.

One day, Mustaine walks all the way to the front of that thing to start a song with a big chord, only to discover his tech had not turned on his wireless battery pack, so the guitar didn’t work.

I was right there as Mustaine walked all the way back in silence, just fuming. I was shitting my pants laughing, thinking, Oh no! Somebody dig a grave for that poor roadie.

The thing is, if you stick around long enough, you see everything. Things go wrong, and it’s not always a bad thing, because I think people in the audience can relate more to those moments than any other.

In celebration of Frank Zappa's birthday this week, we take a look back at some of the guitarist's choice amps and axes, courtesy of Dweezil Zappa.

The following is taken from the GP archives...

“Considering Frank rarely used anything stock, it’s difficult to ape his tones,” says Dweezil Zappa, who tries the best he can to get close to his old man’s sonic deviancy on the Zappa Plays Zappa Tour.

“For the most part, it’s really about having the right midrange, and being able to get controllable feedback at will. Frank devised a way to make that happen by fitting his guitars with onboard preamps that put drastic EQ control at his fingertips, and kicked out a ridiculous amount of boost – up to 18dB. 

"Frank really loved screwing around with stuff, and making it work for him and the way he played.”

Dweezil kindly gave us access to several of his father’s guitars and amps – which we’ve presented here with as much detail as possible, given the fact that mysteries still remain about some aspects of these instruments.

Pignose Amp

This is the Pignose amplifier that was responsible for the bulk of the nasty guitar tones found on the Apostrophe(’) and Over-Nite Sensation albums. 

This little piggy couldn’t escape modification, as evidenced by the two XLR jacks on the back. 

Zappa appeared on The Mike Douglas Show in 1976, where he can be seen walking onstage to perform “Black Napkins” with this Pignose in one hand and the “Baby Snakes” SG in the other.

“Baby Snakes” Gibson SG

The “Baby Snakes” SG was Zappa’s main guitar for the latter part of the Seventies. The guitar is not actually a Gibson but rather the creation of “a guy in Phoenix,” who made his way backstage and sold the guitar to Zappa for $500. 

Though its feel is a lot like that of a Gibson SG, closer inspection reveals such non-Gibson details as a 23rd fret and some nifty inlays and ornamental woodwork.

Luthier/electronics maker Rex Bogue – the man who Zappa also tasked to bring Hendrix’s charred Miami Pop Festival Strat back to life – added various delights to this guitar, such as phase switches and an onboard preamp (Bogue passed away in 1996).

Mid-Seventies 100-watt Marshall JMP

This stock, mid-Seventies 100-watt Marshall JMP head was a mainstay in Zappa’s setup from 1974 on through the 1979-84 tours.

Gibson ES-5 Switchmaster

This ES-5 Switchmaster was used on the first three Mothers of Invention records. We also know that Frank plugged it into a Fender Deluxe for the album Freak Out!

He had the portly, knob-festooned jazz box later outfitted with Barcus Berry pickups and even more switches and knobs that, according to Dweezil, are no longer functioning.

Gibson Les Paul Custom

Pictured on the Shut Up ’n Play Yer Guitar cover, this Les Paul Custom is loaded with Seymour Duncan humbuckers and has been outfitted with a Dan Armstrong Green Ringer circuit (which was installed in the control cavity) and an XLR output jack. 

An extra knob located in the midst of the stock controls is a nine-position rotary switch that allows for single-coil/humbucker and out-of-phase options. The mini-toggle switch selects between series and parallel operation.

“Roxy” SG

This is the same guitar used and pictured on the 1974 Roxy & Elsewhere album. 

Though the two non-stock switches on the guitar’s lower horn were present in the Roxy era, the guitar has been augmented since those days with a mirrored top and various preamps, phasing switches, and active-filter circuits.

Martin D-18S 12-fret “Standard” Dreadnought

Martin’s Dick Boak helped us identify this acoustic guitar, which is a D-18S 12-fret “standard” Dreadnought with a slotted headstock, Brazilian rosewood fretboard, headplate, and bridge, and mahogany back and sides. 

It was used on the 1974 recording of “Sleep Dirt” and the tune “Blessed Relief” from The Grand Wazoo. 

Zappa traded a Telecaster to get the Martin from its owner, Mark Volman (a.k.a “Flo”), from Zappa’s early Seventies "Flo and Eddie" lineup.

Performance Guitar

Used on Frank’s last tour, in 1988, this custom-made Performance solidbody sports concentric knobs along with tiny screwdriver-adjustable trimpots to accommodate the tone tweaking Zappa was so fond of.

“The trimpots are identical parametric filter circuits,” Zappa’s tech, Midget Sloatman, told GP in 1995. “One trimpot is dedicated to bass frequencies from about 50Hz to 2kHz, and the other one affects the top-end frequencies from about 500Hz up to 20kHz. 

"The filters also featured a variable resonant frequency [or ‘Q’] knob that allowed Frank to control the feedback characteristics of his rig in any hall. He could basically tune his guitar to the room, determine how the room responded to the amplifier, and then use the Q control to elicit the feedback he wanted.

“Frank also used the active filters to emphasize the highs in the 4k-to-8k range in order to bring out the nuances of the strings."

Jimi Hendrix Sunburst Fender Stratocaster

Given to Zappa by a Hendrix roadie, this formerly sunburst Stratocaster was mutilated by Hendrix at the 1968 Miami Pop Festival. 

Zappa had it hanging on a wall in his basement for years until Rex Bogue put it back together with Zappa-approved electronic delights, such as a Dan Armstrong Green Ringer and a Barcus-Berry contact pickup buried in its original replacement neck! This neck, however, is a fairly new addition, as is the tortoise-shell pickguard.

Dweezil shows the guitar and talks about it in the video below provided by Norman’s Rare Guitars.

In 1970, Mick Ronson changed the musical fortunes of David Bowie, a struggling singer-songwriter with two novelty hits behind him.

Together, and with their band the Spiders From Mars, they reinvented Bowie musically and created some of glam-rock’s best-loved albums: Hunky Dory, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, Aladdin Sane and Pin Ups.

Afterward, Ronson struggled to match that initial success, despite a catalog of collaborations that included some of rock’s biggest names: Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Ian Hunter, Roger McGuinn, Morrissey, John Mellencamp and many others.

Although Ronson’s career was defined by his time with Bowie, there was a significant before and after.

In the 1960s, he played in various groups from his hometown of Hull, including the Mariners, who were advised by the Rolling Stones’ Bill Wyman to change their name to the King Bees around the time Bowie was fronting a group called Davie Jones and the King Bees.

He was also a member of the Rats, whose main claim to fame was the 1967 single “The Rise and Fall of Bernie Gripplestone.”

“Mick was the best guitarist in Hull, so when he left to head down south and join Bowie, I was pretty upset,” recalls Benny Marshall, the Rats’ lead singer and a close friend of Ronson’s.

“John Cambridge, our drummer, had played with Bowie on Space Oddity [his second album, a.k.a. David Bowie]. He was the bloke who went back to Hull in January 1970 with the brief to find Ronson and bring him to London. He found Mick marking out the lines on the municipal football pitch.”

Cambridge did as instructed, and Bowie and Ronson were introduced at the Marquee club, where Bowie was playing on February 3, 1970.

Two days later, Ronson had learned the riffs and song arrangements well enough to back Bowie, Cambridge and bassist/producer Tony Visconti for a John Peel Radio 1 show live in concert at the Paris Theatre in London’s Lower Regent Street.

They played 15 songs, including a new number, “Width of a Circle,” and plenty of material from Bowie’s recently released self-titled second album.

Reaction was positive, and Ronson moved into Bowie’s Haddon Hall apartment on Southend Road in Beckenham, becoming part of the family. The timing of his arrival was perfect: Bowie wanted to make a hard-rock album. 

As Visconti said later, “We respected groups like Cream, but we didn’t have that in us. We needed someone to be [that] important element, and that somebody was Mick Ronson.”

In terms of his personality, Ronson was a good fit. Everyone loved Ronson’s laconic Northern humor too, especially Bowie, whose father and mother came from Yorkshire and Lancashire, respectively. He’d tease Ronson and get just as good back.

But it was, of course, his guitar playing that stunned them.

“He floored us,” Visconti said. “When David and I met him, we knew he’d fit in looks-wise, but we had no idea what was coming until he picked up his Les Paul and played for us.

“He really didn’t have to be taught the few songs we’d already worked up with John Cambridge. Mick watched our hands on the guitar and bass necks, and he just knew what to play, but he didn’t say much.

“We thought he was just a cool, silent type. Later we found out that our apartment in Beckenham was very ‘big time’ for him, and he was simply overwhelmed.”

Visconti insists Ronson came to Trident Studio in September 1969, when the David Bowie/Space Oddity album was being finalized.

“Mick came to the mix of ‘Wild-Eyed Boy From Freecloud’ and was persuaded to play a little guitar line in the middle part and joined in the handclaps on the same section,” he says.

But if he did, he isn’t credited.

Ronno’s first recorded work with Bowie was on the remade and rocked-out single “Memory of a Free Festival Part 1/Part 2,” recorded in September 1969 and released to zero chart success in June 1970.

In April, sessions began for The Man Who Sold the World, featuring the core band of Bowie, Ronson, Visconti and former Rats drummer Mick “Woody” Woodmansey.

It was a brilliant album, full of Ronson’s crunching heavy-metal attack allied to arcane Wagnerian, dystopian lyrics.

His contributions to Bowie tracks such as “She Shook Me Cold,” “Running Gun Blues” and the epic “Width of a Circle” cemented his place in Bowie’s orbit, leading the singer to call him, with a smug smile, “my Jeff Beck.”

As it happened, both Bowie and Ronson were huge fans of Beck’s Truth album. Marshall says, “[Mick] knew all the licks, except ‘Beck’s Boogie,’ which he dissected but couldn’t master. It infuriated him.

“In 1968, the Rats had supported Beck at the Cat Ballou in Grantham, and afterward Ronno asked him to show him the fast run at the beginning. So Beck plays it, and Mick says, ‘No, play it slower.’ Beck said, ‘If I play it any slower, I’ll stop!’ But he was patient, and Mick learned that riff.”

The Man Who Sold the World had not been a commercial breakthrough, but it added to Ronson’s confidence.

Visconti and Ronson had masterminded the sound and dashed off the arrangements, while Bowie canoodled with his new bride, Angie. 

“She Shook Me Cold,” the dirtiest song he ever wrote, was directly about Mrs. Bowie, but it was Ronson who provided the Jimi Hendrix-style intro and the power-trio setting à la Cream.

Later, Angie lamented the fact that Ronson didn’t receive the publishing he deserved.

“In terms of kudos and feeling that one is valued, it would have been nice for Mick Ronson to have had publishing credits,” she said.

Visconti’s departure from the group saw the arrival of bassist Trevor Bolder. It also gave Ronson his in.

“[Visconti had] done all the string and piano arrangements, so it was my chance to fill the gap,” Ronson said.

“I’d never done it before, but I could read and write music, and I’d watched Tony at Haddon Hall, writing in the basement, saw how he did the charts, and I’d help out.”

Ronson had already written a mini-score for four recorders, used in the break of “All the Madmen.” It was a start.

“I thought, Well, if you can do that then so can I,” he said. “I went out for dinner with [singer] Dana Gillespie, who had tracks that needed strings, and David said, ‘Oh, Mick’ll do that!’ [Like Bowie and Ronson, Gillespie was managed by Tony Defries’ MainMan company.]

“I never had, but it was great. David pushed me forward. That was his thing. He made stuff happen.”

With Visconti gone, Bowie was now heavily reliant on Ronson. His next album, 1971’s Hunky Dory, saw the emergence of his new quartet, featuring Ronson, Bolder and Woodmansey, a taut group that gave his folkie tunes their strong rock underpinnings.

Ronson finally got his credit as the arranger of its songs “Changes,” “Life on Mars?,” “Kooks,” “Quicksand” and the Biff Rose cover “Fill Your Heart,” which was copied virtually note for note from the original.

In retrospect, many have noticed how similar the sound of Hunky Dory is to Michael Chapman’s Fully Qualified Survivor, the 1970 album on which Ronson had made his debut.

Ronson’s burgeoning role extended to instructing hired gun Rick Wakeman for his now iconic piano parts on “Life on Mars?” The Royal College of Music-trained keyboardist (and future Yes member) didn’t mind the input.

“He was a tremendous human being, with oodles of talent,” Wakeman said.

Bowie producer/engineer Ken Scott points to “the great orchestral versions that Ronno put together. [They’re] even more brilliant when you consider he had this habit of running out of time.

“I remember him rushing in 10 minutes before the session, running up to the bathroom and locking himself in so he could find the privacy to finish writing. He’d come out with a huge grin and a stack of charts.”

By the time the band assembled for the followup, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, Ronson’s talents were in full bloom.

On the epic “Five Years,” his string section whipped up the hysteria, while on “Suffragette City,” it was Ronno who came up with the funky, lurching ARP synthesizer sound that many mistake for saxophones.

But working with Bowie had its challenges for Ronson, a now 25-year-old who, until recently, had been a practicing Mormon.

In January 1972, shortly before the Ziggy Stardust sessions were complete, Bowie told Melody Maker he was gay, or, more accurately, bisexual.

Ronson admitted he found it hard to deal with at first. “It embarrassed me,” he said. “I wondered what people would say about me. I knew my family in Hull would get flak. I gave dad a car when I left for London, and people threw red paint over it.”

Aside from his own feelings about it, Ronson understood Bowie was playing with his image as a way to keep the media engaged. “Personally, it was a bit of a shock,” he admitted, “but Bowie manipulated the media again and again.”

Overall, Ronson approached the Ziggy Stardust project with slight suspicion. The explicitness of “Suffragette City” and the discarded track “Sweet Head” concerned him.

“He worried about the lyrics,” Angie says. “I told him. ‘Look, all these people are waving their arms in freedom thanks to you. It may not be what you’re used to in Hull, but accept it.’ Then he’d simmer down and be happy.”

If Ziggy Stardust was a Ronson tour de force, the follow-up, Aladdin Sane, was a mixed blessing for him.

His contributions were immense, but so were those of recently arrived pianist Mike Garson, whom Ronson had auditioned and later advised to “make yourself indispensable. That’s what David likes. Don’t just be a session man.”

Certainly, Ronson lived up that credo. His work on Lou Reed’s Transformer, produced with Bowie the August after Ziggy Stardust, effectively rescued Reed’s career after his debut solo album had bombed.

“It was a good experience for me,” Ronno said. “Lou’s guitar was always out of tune, so I’d kneel in front of him and tune it properly. He didn’t care, ’cause he was so laid-back.”

Without his contribution, Transformer might never have got off the ground.

“It came out pretty well,” Ronson said. “Though I didn’t know what the hell [Lou] was talking about half the time. He’d say stuff like: ‘Can you make it sound a bit more grey?’”

Fortunately the album was a roaring success.

“Transformer is easily my best-produced album,” Reed said. “That has a lot to do with Mick Ronson. His influence was stronger than David’s, but together, as a team, they’re terrific.”

By 1973, though, it seemed that Ronson had become dispensable, along with Woody Woodmansey and Trevor Bolder, both of whom had been dropped for having the gall to protest when they discovered that new arrival Garson was making 10 times their salary.

The guitarist’s relations with Bowie were frosty when, on October 20,1973, Ronson played with Bowie onstage for the last time in that decade.

Only 200 people saw the appearance in the flesh, shot for NBC’s The Midnight Special. Dubbed “The 1980 Floor Show,” the concert featured Bowie serenading French singer/actress/model Amanda Lear with “Sorrow,” a 1966 hit for the Merseys that Bowie would record for 1973’s Pin Ups, an album on which he covered songs from the Swinging London era.

He and singer Marianne Faithfull also duetted on Sonny & Cher’s “I Got You Babe.” But Bowie hated the end result, which he derided as “shot abysmally.”

This was the night Ziggy Stardust truly left the building, which may explain why a smiling Bowie ended each song with an affectionate pat on Ronson’s white satin-clad back.

As the wingman was increasingly sidelined, MainMan, his and Bowie’s mutual management company, promised him the earth.

He was to be the next superstar off the production line, said manager Tony Defries. In the summer of ’73, having finished his sessions for Pin Ups, most of which he’d arranged, as usual, Ronson returned to the Château d’Hérouville studios outside Paris and made his solo debut album, Slaughter on 10th Avenue.

Bowie chipped in from a distance, gifting the songs “Growing Up and I’m Fine,” “Pleasure Man/Hey Ma, Get Papa” and “Music Is Lethal.”

RCA weren’t overjoyed with what it heard, and the album’s release date was put back more than six months, to 1974.

Within months, Ronson was back in another band, joining Mott the Hoople for what would be their final single, “Saturday Gigs.”

Ronson and frontman Ian Hunter had bonded back when Mick had knocked out a string arrangement for Mott’s “Sea Diver,” but the other band members resented the arrival of this “rock star” in their midst, with MainMan and RCA sending limos for their boy while Mott traveled together in a bus.

Tired of the conflict, Hunter split the band.

Ronson went back to his solo career. Bowie didn’t take part in the follow-up album, Play Don’t Worry, but he allowed Ronson to use the backing track from their cover of the Velvet Underground’s “White Light/White Heat,” which had been recorded for an American attempt at a Pin Ups album that was discarded soon after.

Play Don’t Worry was excellent in parts. Although he wasn’t a natural songwriter, Ronson did himself proud on the opening “Billy Porter,” “Empty Bed” and versions of two songs by Pure Prairie League, whose 1972 album Bustin’ Out featured his guitar and string arrangements.

While Slaughter on 10th Avenue was being mixed, Ronson returned to the studio with Bowie to create demos for the future Diamond Dogs tracks “1984” and “Dodo.”

His work wouldn’t appear on the finished album, a creepy, avant-garde affair, but his trademark guitar style did in the shape of “Rebel Rebel,” almost a Spiders From Mars pastiche riff, played now by Bowie.

According to Ronson’s wife, Suzi, “When Mick heard Diamond Dogs, he wasn’t exactly depressed. He just thought, Oh, that’s Dave going out on a limb. But he would have done that record like a shot.”

Instead Ronson embarked on a mercifully brief solo tour, including a show at London’s Rainbow Theatre in February 1974, where he had strings and woodwind sections and, on backing vocals, the Thunderthighs – Karen Friedman, Dari Lalou and Casey Synge – who famously appeared on Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side” and Mott the Hoople’s “Roll Away the Stone.”

Cast into the spotlight, Ronson didn’t appear overly confident. The ultimate sideman was too modest to carry this off.

Bowie watched on from the wings and offered words of encouragement during the intermission, but decided against making a guest appearance.

After Bowie, where does one go? Ronson produced and played on Ian Hunter’s self-titled 1975 debut solo album.

That same year, he moved to New York City, rented a place on Hudson Street near the Meatpacking District and enjoyed the city with his best friend Hunter, who had provided safe haven via Mott the Hoople, Mott, and the Hunter Ronson Band.

This is where they met Bob Dylan, who invited Ronson to join his band of gypsies, the Rolling Thunder Revue, after a meet engineered by Dylan’s main fixer, Bob Neuwirth.

That evening began at the Bitter End, on Bleecker Street. “We weren’t Dylan fans at all,” Suzi Ronson says. “Mick thought he sounded like Yogi Bear. But Ian took us anyway, and Dylan played [his 1976] Desire album, and he was mezmerising, better than David.

“Then we went to the Bottom Line, where Mick got thrown out three times for being drunk and disorderly.”

Back at the Bitter End, Hunter recalls “the whole place going insane ’cause Dylan was singing with Neuwirth and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. And Neuwirth [sees] Mick and says to Dylan, ‘Go and ask him!’”

In Ronson’s version, “[Neuwirth] was with this guy,” he recalled. “And I looked at this bloke he was with and thought, Wait a minute, I know you! And, of course, it was Dylan. And we talked, and he said, ‘We’re going on the road. Why don’t you come with us?’

“I honestly thought it was a hoax. Then Dylan phoned me, said the tour was going to happen and would I be there? Like a shot!”

“That tour rescued Mick’s professional life,” Suzi says.

Ronson was soon back with Hunter, appearing on You’re Never Alone With a Schizophrenic and Welcome to the Club.

With his solo career on hold, he became a full-time producer. He worked with Van Morrison, John Mellencamp, Roger McGuinn and Meat Loaf backup singer Ellen Foley. He even contributed guitar to the title track from David Cassidy’s 1976 album, Getting It in the Street.

Despite his signature guitar style and tone, Ronson became engrossed in writing string arrangements.

“He lapsed into the language of strings,” Hunter says, “but he was a bit lazy, ’cause if it was interesting he’d do it using 15 tracks and one guitar track.

“He wrote arrangements on Marlboro Light fag packets. But he could be persnickety and picky if he was involved. He could have matured into a world-famous musician again, but he’d meet people on the street and, next thing, he’s doing a Mexican punk band.”

“But he was great with fans. He’d invite them back for tea, he’d return their phone calls. Sometimes he could be the big guy and show off, so he wasn’t perfect, gorgeous as he was. I considered him like family, so there were arguments.

“One time he disappeared to Sweden for a project when we were in the middle of something, so I had a go. And he just said, ‘Look, I’ve done Bowie and I’ve done you, so I’m allowed to fuck up,’ and we just collapsed into laughter.”

In the late 1980s, Ronson’s health began to cause concern. He was diagnosed with liver cancer, something he neither made a secret of nor chose to acknowledge as a threat. Instead he threw himself into projects such as Morrissey’s 1992 album, Your Arsenal.

Speaking with Classic Rock, Morrissey said, “Mick told me that he alone wrote the main guitar hooks for ‘Starman,’ ‘The Man Who Sold the World’ and others – not just hooks, really, but grand choruses in themselves – but a share of publishing wasn’t ever on offer for him.

“When you consider his solos in ‘Time’ and ‘Moonage Daydream,’ then you can guess that they were his own creations.”

A fan of both Ronson and Bowie, Morrissey was intrigued by letters Bowie sent to his old guitarist chum during the making of Your Arsenal.

“One day at breakfast, I asked Mick why Bowie wrote so often,” Morrissey recalled, “and he said, ‘He keeps asking me what you’re like in the studio,’ and then he exploded with laughter.

“I have no idea why this was so hilarious. I think Bowie had interest in Mick only as much as it was in his nature to like anyone.”

Certainly, Bowie was impressed by Your Arsenal enough that he invited Ronson to work with him on his 1993 studio album, Black Tie White Noise.

He also kicked off a fine version of “All the Young Dudes” with Bowie and Hunter at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert at Wembley Stadium on Easter Monday, 1992, which was the last time his fans saw him onstage.

One year later, on April 29, 1993, Ronson died of liver cancer at age 46.

He spent his last hours in the company of Hunter, Suzi and sister Maggi at Tony Defries’ house on Hasker Street in West London.

Ronson didn’t die penniless, but he wasn’t wealthy by rock star standards.

“He bought the house in Woodstock on Glasco Turnpike [in New York State] because he made money out of my records and Ellen Foley’s Night Out,” Ian Hunter says. “His car was an old Toyota Corolla that sounded like a hair dryer.”

Hunter summed up the gloomy finale in his Ronno elegy “Michael Picasso,” from 1977’s The Artful Dodger: “You turned into a ghost surrounded by your pain/And the thing that I liked the least was sitting round Hasker Street, lying about the future.”

“As a rock duo, I thought we were as good as Mick and Keith.”

“What is remarkable is that he was so overlooked, and he still is,” Morrissey said of Ronson. “Has Mick ever been on the cover of a major British music magazine? Even when he died? He was by nature extremely humble. He was just happy to be there.”

Though he was the first of many great guitarists Bowie would adopt, champion and cast aside, Ronson continued to hold a place in his heart after their split, perhaps more than any other who followed him.

“Mick was the perfect foil for the Ziggy character,” Bowie admitted years afterward.

“He was very much a salt-of-the-earth type, the blunt northerner with a defiantly masculine personality, so what you got was the old-fashioned yin-and-yang thing.

For years after Mick Ronson’s death, the where-abouts of his stripped 1968 Gibson Les Paul Custom – the Ziggy Stardust guitar – were a mystery even to those who had been closest to him.

When Rick Tedesco asked Ronson’s friend and fellow performer Ian Hunter about it, the former Mott the Hoople frontman shrugged.

“God only knows where that went,” he replied. “Mick probably gave it to some guy walking across the street. He didn’t care about gear. It was just a tool to him.”

For Tedesco, finding the guitar became a mission.

A guitarist, producer and engineer whose credits include work with Hunter, Alice Cooper and former Cooper band members Dennis Dunaway and Neal Smith, Tedesco had become a Bowie fanatic through the artist’s 1974 album, Diamond Dogs.

“I was a 13-year-old kid who was just obsessed with horror movies,” he recalls. “And then I saw that album cover. I just absolutely loved that album. I was like, ‘I’m done. That’s what I want to do.’”

Working his way backward through Bowie’s catalog, he soon discovered Ronson’s signature performances on the albums Hunky Dory, Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane and Pin Ups.

Eventually he caught D.A. Pennebaker’s 1973 Ziggy Stardust concert film on television. “There was Mick,” he recalls. “And that’s what I wanted to be – David Bowie’s guitarist.”

Tedesco was particularly drawn to Ronson’s Les Paul Custom. Originally a Black Beauty, the guitar was stripped in 1970 after Ronson heard that removing the finish could improve resonance and high-frequency tone.

He subsequently used it on his first record with Bowie, The Man Who Sold the World, right through Hunky Dory, Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane and Pin Ups, making it the vehicle for each album’s searing power chords, singing leads and lyrical solos.

For Tedesco, a hardcore Bowie and Ronson fan, the guitar was an indelible part of his own identity as a guitarist.

By the 1990s, he was working at a music store in Danbury, Connecticut, when one day Hunter strolled in.

“Ian happened to live about 45 minutes away at the time,” he says. “I was like, Holy shit, it’s Ian Hunter! I even had posters of him and Mick on my wall.”

Hunter made repeat visits, and a friendship developed after Tedesco helped him refurbish his studio with an ADAT system.

“Mick had passed, and Ian didn’t really know what the hell to do,” Tedesco says. “He didn’t have his right-hand man anymore. So he started asking me, ‘Do you want to put some stuff down on this song?’”

Before he knew it, Tedesco was working with Hunter, who also introduced him to some members of Alice Cooper’s camp.

Hunter still had several of Ronson’s guitars, which he was holding onto for Suzi, Mick’s wife, but the stripped Les Paul Custom wasn’t among them.

“Nobody knew where it was,” Tedesco says. “I did some research and talked to one guy who thought he remembered an interview where Mick said he’d given it to the Hard Rock Cafe.”

Tedesco began calling Hard Rock locations, asking if they had the guitar, but a sweep of the company’s database came up empty.

“They had nothing of his at all,” he says.

Afterward, Tedesco’s source confirmed that the guitar had gone to the Hard Rock, adding that the restaurant was located in Australia. Because that facility is licensed from, but not owned by, the Hard Rock, its holdings weren’t listed in the company’s records.

Tedesco felt a glimmer of hope.

One call to the restaurant was all it took. “I asked a guy there if they had Mick’s guitar, and he said, ‘Yeah, I’m standing right next to it,’” Tedesco says. “They had it hanging on the wall. I went through the roof.”

As it happened, the Hard Rock was open to a trade if Tedesco could give them a guitar to replace it.

“A lot of people like myself are huge fans of Mick’s, but he wasn’t a giant marquee name, so they didn’t really care about the guitar,” he explains.

He offered them a small collection that included some guitars signed by Hunter as well as some bearing Gene Simmons’ signature, and the deal was done.

It wasn’t without complications, though. In his excitement, Tedesco accidentally addressed his package to Newcastle, rather than Castle Hill, Australia. His guitars spent six weeks lost in a UPS lockup until the error was discovered.

Soon after, Ronson’s electric guitar showed up at his house.

“I had been out running some errands and got home to find this box leaning against my garage door,” Tedesco recalls. “I was so excited. And then I opened it up and saw a headstock. There was no case. The guitar came all the way from Australia covered in bubble wrap.”

To his relief, it made the trip unscathed, and with a bit of cleaning of its electronics, it was back in action.

For Tedesco, who’d purchased his childhood home after his parents retired, the coolest part of the experience was playing Ronson’s Les Paul in the very room where he’d first discovered the guitarist in the Ziggy Stardust film.

“It was such a weird cosmic circle,” he says.

Over the years, he put the guitar to good use. In addition to the Les Paul Custom, he’s owned Ronson’s Marshall Major tube amp head, among other gear, and two-inch tapes from the guitarist’s studio.

He made a video of his collection, allowing fans to see and hear these instruments for the first time in years.

He also loaned the guitar to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and shared it with fans who stopped by the Guitar Hangar, the musical instrument shop he opened in 1999.

Eventually, he offered a limited-edition Mick Ronson Tribute Guitar based on the Les Paul Custom. “I did all this with no intention of doing anything but sharing what I had with the Mick-loving world,” he says.

But eventually, Tedesco began receiving offers to buy the guitar. In 2014, he rejected one for $50,000 from producer Bob Rock, funneled to him by Suzi Ronson.

Soon after, a fan from England – Simon Dolan, the multimillionaire entrepreneur and race car driver – asked about buying both the guitar and Ronson’s Marshall Major head.

“‘It would have to be for stupid money, and I’m not looking to sell,’” Tedesco recalls telling him. “I said it would take at least 200 thousand, just for the guitar alone. And he goes, ‘Done!’

"And I thought, Oh god. Did I just sell my Mick Ronson guitar?”

Two days later, the wire transfer came through his bank.

“I cried,” Tedesco says. “I’d never been so sad and sick over selling something.

“I called Ian up, crying, and he started laughing at me,” he says, cracking up at the memory. “He said, ‘You silly bastard! Mick would tell you you’re a fucking wanker. That’s why you buy something like that. It’s an investment. And it paid off!’

“But I felt like I had sold my soul. It took me several months to get over that.”

In the end, the money went to good use. At the time, Tedesco was getting ready for the grand opening of a new and larger Guitar Hangar in Brookfield, Connecticut, the store’s current location.

“It allowed me to open in style, with tons of gear and without going into massive debt,” he says.

“But owning that guitar was never ever about money. I knew it was worth a lot, but I never envisioned parting with it. It was where I was forged. It put all of my parts together and made me go, Ah, there’s a place for me on planet Earth!

“And then it was gone.”

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Even a cursory glance at producer/engineer Ken Scott’s resume is bound to fill someone with a sense of awe. Among the iconic artists he’s worked with are the likes of the Beatles, Elton John, Jeff Beck, Lou Reed and Harry Nilsson.

During the early ’70s, Scott was the go-to man behind the console for the crème de la crème of British rock royalty.

George Harrison tapped him to engineer his classic All Things Must Pass, and John Lennon followed suit for his Imagine album.

Astonishingly, if one were to have told Scott in 1972 that a half-century later he would be reminiscing about any of the albums he was recording, he would have laughed his head off.

“I think I would have found the whole thing ludicrous,” he says. “We never thought anything we were doing had any kind of longevity,” he says. “It’s not that we didn’t think the music was any good; it’s just that we were constantly moving on to the next thing.”

Among the records Scott had a hand in during those heady days of the early ’70s are four epochal (and star-making) David Bowie albums that he engineered and co-produced with the singer-songwriter: 1971’s Hunky Dory, 1972’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, and 1973’s Aladdin Sane and Pin Ups.

Viewed in the rearview mirror, the variety of musical styles that mercurial artist flirted with, absorbed and even pioneered on these records – there’s folk, dancehall, pop, art rock, glam, garage rock and proto-punk – now feels nothing less than remarkable.

But as Scott recalls, “The idea that we were doing something historic never entered our minds. Back then, recording contracts called for two albums a year. When we made a record, we thought, If this lasts for six months, then we’ve done our job correctly.”

Scott got his start at the age of 16 as a lowly tape logger at London’s EMI Studios and gradually rose through the ranks to second engineer and then full-fledged engineer, manning the board for the bulk of the Beatles’ sprawling 1968 self-titled double album.

He first worked with Bowie on the albums Space Oddity and The Man Who Sold the World.

“Quite honestly, I didn’t see David’s talent at the time,” he says. “I thought he was a really nice guy who obviously had a certain amount of talent. But from what I’d seen on those two albums I did with him as an engineer, I didn’t think he had it in him to be huge.”

Scott had yet to produce a record on his own, and he was itching for an opportunity to jump into the big leagues.

Ironically, that invitation came from Bowie, who had asked him to engineer a session that the singer was producing for his clothing-designer friend, Freddie Burretti, whom Bowie hoped would become “the next Mick Jagger.”

“Being British, we were taking a tea break in the studio,” Scott recalls, “and I mentioned to David that I wanted to start producing.

“That’s when he said, ‘Well, I’ve just signed a new management deal. They want to put me in the studio to record an album so they can shop a record deal. I was going to produce it myself, but I don’t know if I’m capable. Will you co-produce it with me?’”

It was an enticing offer, but Scott was still unsure that Bowie had the goods in him. However, his mind changed a few weeks later when the singer played him demos for what would be his next album.

“At that point, I suddenly realized there was a hell of a lot more to him that I’d heard from the previous two albums,” Scott says. “And it was then that I realized that he could be huge.”

From the outset, Scott adopted a “let David be David” ethos in the studio, which he says was a stark contrast to the production style of the singer’s previous co-producer, Tony Visconti.

“Tony was the bass player, the arranger and the producer, and I didn’t get the feeling that David had much say,” he offers.

“It was David’s songs and his vocals. He had a certain amount of input, but it didn’t go that far. I learned a lot from watching people like [producers] George Martin and Gus Dudgeon. They both had the mindset of ‘the talent is put in the studio to create, and you have to allow the talent the freedom to do that,’ knowing that you can always pull them back if they go too far afield.”

Hunky Dory was Scott’s and Bowie’s “getting to know each other” album, and as Scott notes, “We both went in with a lot of fear, because neither of us had really done what we were about to do. But as things started to happen, we gained confidence, and of course, David had some wonderful songs.

“As we worked together, we started to push the envelope a little further, and we saw that things were working, so we kept at it over the next few albums.”

It also helped that Bowie brought with him an ace band, the Spiders from Mars, consisting of bassist Trevor Bolder, drummer Mick Woodmansey and guitarist Mick Ronson, the latter of whom would soon become the singer’s flashy onstage foil and main studio sound architect.

“I already knew Ronno and Woody a little from their playing on The Man Who Sold the World, and I knew they would work perfectly,” Scott says.

“They were easy to work with, very professional and fun. Ronno was definitely the band leader when one was required, but generally the guys just knew what they had to do and what was needed.”

Ziggy Stardust is viewed as one of rock’s great concept albums, but you once said that it didn’t start that way at all.

I don’t think there ever was a concept to it, but somehow that became applied to the record. People find small things to put a story together.

One of the mainstays of the whole concept album thing is the track “Starman.” Without that song, the whole concept falls apart.

Originally, we had Chuck Berry’s “Around and Around” in that place. It was only when RCA said they didn’t hear a single that we went back in and recorded “Starman.” Had that not happened, the concept idea would’ve been out the window. They wouldn’t have had anything to pin it on.

Generally speaking, how did David present songs to you? Were they demoed? Were some cuts written in the studio?

Some songs were demoed, but nothing was really written in the studio. I remember on Hunky Dory, “The Bewlay Brothers” was the last track that we did.

It came together in the studio, but it wasn’t written there. David came in toward the end of the recording and said, “We’ve got to do one more track. I’ve got this song, but don’t listen to the lyrics.”

I asked him why, and he said, “Because they don’t mean anything. I just wrote it for the American market to see what they would read into it.”

This was during the “Paul is dead” period. David picked up on how people in America were reading into things that weren’t there, so he came up with lyrics specifically for that kind of thing, to see what would happen.

Over the years, I’ve heard many different interpretations of what it’s about, and I’m sure David agreed with all of them.

Was David generally efficient in the studio?

Are you kidding? [laughs] He petrified Woody, Trevor and Ronno. They were always on edge, because they always felt if they didn’t get the track quickly, David would just say, “It’s not happening. Let’s move on to something else.”

Bear in mind that, vocally, he was absolutely astounding. Of the four albums I co-produced with him, 85 to 90 percent of the vocals were first takes from beginning to end.

I would run the tape a little just to get him to sing so I could get the sound levels, and then once I hit “record” to get a real take, he would nail it.

A lot of those performances are what you hear today. He didn’t hold back. On the song “Five Years,” by the end of the take, he was bawling his eyes out. Tears were rolling down his face. He was amazing.

How was David’s relationship with Mick Ronson as guitar players? Did he give Mick guidance as to what he wanted, or did he let him come up with his own parts?

The feeling that I got – or I get in hindsight – was that David was very good at picking teams. He looked for people who could give him exactly what he was after without necessarily telling them what he wanted.

He would show them the song, and then people sort of worked out their own parts. But it usually would be exactly what he wanted.

There might have been times when something would’ve been said, but most of the time it was left up to everyone to sort of come up with their own parts.

With me, David never came to the mixes. He would leave me to get on with it and do what I did best.

What were your feelings about Mick as a guitar player?

Oh, he was great. He was also quick – one or two takes. Then we’d listen and decide what should be doubled or harmonized. He knew what a song needed.

Quite often I’d say, “Okay, Mick, it’s time to –” and he would say, “I know, the solo. I’ll do it right now.” And he would do what was needed right away.

David played a lot of acoustic guitar in the studio, but did he ever play electric?

I don’t remember David ever playing electric guitar, but there were times when Mick would play acoustic guitar.

What kinds of guitars would Mick bring to the studio? He liked his ’68 Les Paul Custom.

It would always be his Paul, his Marshall stack and his Cry Baby wah.

With the wah, he would park it to the one setting and leave it there, which made things very easy for us in terms of finding a sound. There was none of the messing around with the amp.

Keeping the wah at one setting gave him more of a unique sound because it was more compact. He just sounded different from everybody else who would go in and turn up loud.

On Ziggy Stardust, there’s a great marriage of electric riffs and solos with the sound of acoustics. Was that combination ever discussed?

It wasn’t discussed, really; it was just understood: “This is the sound for this song.”

For me, the acoustic thing served two purposes. All of those old rock and roll songs by Eddie Cochran, Presley, Bill Haley – all those guys – they had acoustic guitar on them. To get that early rock and roll sound, we needed acoustics.

There was that, but something I didn’t realize was how they took the place of cymbals. During that period, I didn’t like cymbals, so I would tend to keep the overheads down on the drums, but I also had a very bright sound on the acoustic, and that sound covered what cymbals would normally do. At the same time, we got a totally different feel than what cymbals would have achieved.

You have that mix of acoustics and electrics on “Suffragette City,” which is now seen as a proto-punk song. The solo is one of Mick’s best. Did he just pull that out of the air one day?

Probably. Like I said, he was very fast. We had two weeks to make an album, so we had to do everything quickly, including solos. We didn’t micromanage anything.

Now Mick wasn’t just the guitar player; he did the string arrangements too.

He did. He was great with that. He had his way of doing things. He’d work on arrangements the night before a session, and apparently he would fall asleep before completing his work.

So he would run into the studio, lock himself in the bathroom and complete it there. Twenty minutes would go by, and he’d come out with a stack of music paper. He’d go into the studio and hand it out to the musicians.

At the point when you recorded Aladdin Sane, David was a star.

[laughs] Yes, very much so.

Did you notice any changes in him that made working with him different?

Working with him? No. There was a change, I think, for both of us: We’d gained confidence. Obviously, when you’re working on something and then it’s suddenly successful, that gives you a lot of confidence to try other things. But we basically worked the same.

The weirdest thing for me was recording some of the stuff at RCA in New York, because the studio was heavily unionized, and I had to play the typical producer, sitting at the end of the desk. I wasn’t allowed to touch anything.

I remember once when I pushed a button on the desk while the engineer and assistant engineers were out eating: I was just trying to make sure the band could hear themselves on their headphones and rehearse the next track.

When the engineer came back, he hit the roof. I could have taken the entire studio out. Everyone could have gone on strike because I pushed one button.

Aladdin Sane is a tougher-sounding album than Ziggy Stardust.

It is tougher sounding, and I think that’s a result of the band touring the States. It changed them in certain ways. They got a bit heavier and grew some balls.

It was recorded very much the same way as the others; we just went in and did what we did. But yes, David’s songs were heavier because of the American influence.

It’s there in “The Jean Genie,” which uses Bo Diddley’s “I’m a Man” riff as it was interpreted by the Yardbirds, but in a bluesier style.

Absolutely. David was picking up on all that stuff.

Because the band was touring so much, was it harder for you as a producer to get everyone’s attention? Their world was now moving a lot faster.

In some ways, but as I’ve said, we just went into the studio and did what we did. It’s what we knew. We didn’t think about the time frame. It’s not like nowadays, when people take two years to make a bloody record. They micromanage every single eighth note or whatever.

Do you remember what brought about the cover of “Let’s Spend the Night Together”?

Not really. David always liked to do covers. I guess he wanted to do a Stones song because of his friendship with Jagger.

You recorded a few amazing songs that didn’t make Aladdin Sane. There was “John, I’m Only Dancing.”

That was a very strange one. There are so many different versions of that, some of which I was part of and some I wasn’t. But they’re all almost identical.

There was also “All the Young Dudes.”

Oh yeah. I really enjoyed that one, but it just didn’t work for the album. That happens. When I worked with Supertramp, we had the song “Breakfast in America” for their Crime of the Century album, but it didn’t fit the record. It came out much later [as the title track] on what became their biggest album.

Finally, there’s Pin Ups. Is it fair to call that kind of a “stop-gap” album?

I think so. That was a strange one in many respects because David had just fired two members of the band: Trevor and Woody. In that respect, there was a lot of ill feeling.

The bass player who was originally supposed to be playing on the album pulled out at the last minute, so David had to go back to Trevor and say, “Will you play bass?” After you’ve just fired the guy, that’s a very hard thing to do. You can imagine how Trevor felt about it.

Ronno, I think, was in a difficult place because he knew that he wasn’t going to be doing much more with David.

Tony Defries, their manager, had said to Mick, “I’m going to make you a star just the way I did David.” Which was bullshit. Defries just wanted all of them out of the way, because they had threatened a strike when they were going over to Japan.

With Mick being fired before the start of the record, was he harder to work with?

He was fine. He was good. It was a very strange album, because things were changing and had changed.

My wife was going to give birth to twins while I was in France. I flew back the night before, but I still managed to get to the hospital late, after she’d already given birth. There were distractions for everyone.

Outside of the studio, did you and David socialize much?

We did, but not often. We were generally too busy.

As you were finishing Pin Ups, was there any indication where David was headed next?

Not at that point. It became more obvious a little later, because I continued working with him a little.

There was something called “The 1980 Floor Show,” which was for [NBC’s] The Midnight Special. I did that.

Just before we recorded it, there were two songs that David had put together that were on Diamond Dogs: “1984” and “Dodo.” They were one song.

That was one of the few times that David came to a mix, and he kept on putting on Barry White. It was sort of a Philadelphia soul-type sound. He kept on reverting to that, saying, “I want it to sound more like that.”

We could never get that, because the musicians were so totally different, but he was after the American feel.

He was getting into soul and funk, but certainly not the electronic music that he would help to pioneer later in the ’70s.

Oh, no, no. That certainly came about much later. But it was that shift to what he would call “plastic soul,” and that started to become obvious.

That was the last time I worked with him. There was that track, and then we did “The 1980 Floor Show,” and then we never worked together again.

Browse the David Bowie catalog here.

I’ve never seen one before this – or even knew it existed. But there it was in the Gibson ledger from 1969. It’s got the original tags, too. The tags say it’s an all-gold finish, with gold Bigsby, which is pretty cool.

It may have been some kind of presentation piece or a trade show guitar. It’s an unbelievable piece and is in virtually brand-new condition. It plays well, too, and the T-top pickups sound great.

It’s an all-gold finish meaning everything, including the back of the neck, is gold; Goldtop finishes are also self-explanatory.

It has various original paperwork and tags with it, including some that state ‘all-gold, special order, gold Bigsby.’

Somebody had it down previously as a ’68, but there’s no dot in the ‘i’ [of the headstock logo] and the serial number corresponds to early ’69; Gibson repeated ’66 serial numbers in 1969.

It’s a little on the heavier side, as they were – especially with a Bigsby. ’68 and ’69 guitars can be a little weighty, but all in all they’re really cool.

I mean, they were definitely still trying to put out some special pieces in the late '60s. This is a good made-in-the-USA pre-volute electric guitar. Obviously, 1970 is the beginning of the end for a lot of things. But not all guitars that came out of the Norlin era were bad.

Way too many people still believe the fairy tale that they were using '50s wood to build the late-'60s guitars. That simply is not true. There were no leftover '50s bodies made into ’68 Les Pauls. It never happened. I think that’s purely wishful thinking.

Gibson brought the single-cutaway Les Paul back in ’68 due to popular demand. They were pretty dead until Keith Richards went on The Ed Sullivan Show with The Rolling Stones in ’64 playing his ’59 ’Burst.

People’s interests were regenerated, and everyone was making a big hubbub of trading these '50s single-cutaway Les Pauls around. So Gibson decided they weren’t going to sit on the sideline and started making them again.

However, the fact that they reintroduced a P-90 guitar was pretty shocking to me. They could have just put T-top humbuckers in it and had a Les Paul Standard with dual humbuckers and the appointments as a ’57 or ’58 Goldtop. But for whatever reason they liked that ’55/’56 ABR-1/P-90 thing.

At this point, Gibson was a company that didn’t yet fully understand the significance of its own history. There were a few older cats hanging around, but I don’t think there was the same kind of thought process that went into it as nowadays.

Some of the first Les Paul Goldtops that came out in ’68 have an SG-style crown inlay because they didn’t have the Les Paul Model silkscreen logo ready to go in time. I have one of them. They made about 20 or so of those.

In ’69, pretty soon after the reissue P-90 Goldtops came out, they changed to Les Paul Deluxes with mini-humbuckers.

The Les Paul Custom was reintroduced in ’68 as a dual-humbucker guitar, rather than being three-pickup like earlier ones. I think they were listening to people on some level who were complaining they didn’t like the third/middle pickup.

And at that point the two-pickup Les Paul Custom was born – though they did make a very small amount of dual-humbucker guitars in ’57 and ’59.

As the Les Paul Custom kept evolving – or devolving, depending on how you look at it – Gibson continued to come up with some interesting stuff.

I have one from the early ‘70s with a Brazilian rosewood top. And I have one that’s like a tuxedo, a kind of Randy Rhoads creamy white colour on the top, but the sides and back are black. I also have a ’72 in Sparkling Burgundy, which is really nice. So they were trying a few interesting things to woo people back.

Gibson used gold as a basecoat for their Sparkling Burgundy. You’ll often see those guitars fading to a gold-ish colour as the translucent red fades away.

While the finish on this guitar is virtually mint, gold Gibson finishes are known to fade and wear to a greenish hue. The way it was explained to me is there’s a bronze powder in the paint and that’s why they turn the colour they do. 

For every person I meet that doesn’t like a Bigsby I find the person sitting next to them thinks it’s the greatest thing that’s ever happened. They’re wonderful both ways.

I think the naysayers are probably people that just read internet forums and can’t judge a guitar for what it really is. If you play it for a minute, you’ll discover it’s pretty darn good.

Ultimately, it’s the player that makes the guitar.

Vintage guitar veteran David Davidson owns Well Strung Guitars in Farmingdale, New York

info@wellstrungguitars.com
001 (516) 221-0563

On this day, in 1993, Mick Ronson sadly passed away aged 46. Though he is remembered fondly for his stellar work with the likes of Bob Dylan, Lou Reed and Morrissey it was during his rock star-forging tenure with David Bowie that he shone most brightly.

Having been recruited by Bowie in 1970, Ronson entered the studio that spring to record The Man Who Sold the World. Together, the band created a new, often heavier sound infused with Ronson’s wild, Jeff Beck-inspired electric guitar wizardry.

Ronson’s playing techniques were eccentric, but they worked.

One unusual attribute was that, unlike most other guitarists, he kept his left-hand fingernails fairly long. He claimed that this enabled him to get his nails under the strings to create the kind of extreme vibrato that led some listeners to believe he was using a trem, or play extraordinary bends that sounded like he was deploying a slide.

This was shown off to devastating effect on The Man Who Sold the World’s epic opener, “The Width of a Circle.”

To this end, he kept his guitars subtly detuned, preferring to bend a slightly flattened string into pitch. His idol Jeff Beck used to do something similar during his Yardbirds years.

In this video clip from the David Bowie essential Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars: the Motion Picture, Ronson performs a jaw-dropping guitar solo during a rendition of “The Width of a Circle.”

While pulling out all the stops here, it’s easy to see why he is often considered to be the most iconic of Bowie’s guitar slingers.

Few major guitarists have ever seemed fundamentally less interested in gear than Ronson. Though he did indeed carry backup instruments on tour (and did occasionally use them), Ronno concentrated primarily on one main guitar at a time.

His most famous guitar throughout the Bowie years and beyond was his stripped 1968 Les Paul Custom which he had bought new in 1968 and played until it was literally worn-out – the neck had been broken and repaired one time too many – and Ronson eventually donated it to the Hard Rock Café in Australia.

Thereafter, he switched to a blue rosewood-’board Telecaster, which sustained him through the remainder of his career (though studio pics shot during the Heaven and Hull sessions show him with a white, Floyd Rose-loaded, maple-fretboard, single-humbucker Superstrat of unknown provenance).

He reverted back to Les Pauls, or other humbucker-loaded guitars, for his slide work.

From the Spiders era through his ill-fated solo career, his even more ill-fated tenure with Mott the Hoople, and during his first collaboration with Ian Hunter, Ronson’s guitar amp of choice was a 200-watt Marshall Major head (the same model favored by Ritchie Blackmore) through a single Marshall 4x12.

When he relocated to the U.S., he discovered Mesa/Boogie amps and used them for most of the rest of his life (apart from a brief flirtation with Music Man amps during the sessions for Hunter’s You’re Never Alone With a Schizophrenic album and the subsequent tour immortalized on the Welcome to the Club live album), preferring a combo for studio work and a Mesa head with Marshall cab for live work.

Despite using a Marshall Supa Fuzz and a Tone Bender fuzz pedal, owned previously – allegedly – by Pete Townshend to generate added grit during his tenure with the Spiders, Ronno’s main tonal “secret weapon” was his Vox wah pedal, generally left stationary somewhere near the midpoint of its sweep.

Don't miss the June 2022 issue of Guitar Player where we take a deep dive into the story of the man, the music and the gear, including the tale of Mick Ronson's lost Ziggy Stardust Les Paul.

David Bowie’s landmark fourth studio album Hunky Dory turns 50 today. Often cited among fans as a firm favorite this all-killer-no-filler masterpiece is crammed with classics from cover to cover including "Oh! You Pretty Things,” “Life On Mars?” and the LP’s lead single “Changes.”

Co-produced by Beatles engineer Ken Scott and featuring arguably Bowie’s greatest band – the Spiders from Mars lineup of guitarist Mick Ronson, bassist Trevor Bolder, and drummer Mick Woodmansey – Hunky Dory marked a stylistic turning point.

“It was like, ‘Wow, this is no longer rock ’n’ roll. This is an art form,'” Bowie told one interviewer. “We kind of thought, cool, that’s where we want to be at. Fuck rock ’n’ roll! It’s not about rock ’n’ roll anymore, it’s about: How do you distance yourself from the thing that you’re within? We got off on that.”

Key to fulfilling the album’s disparate vision was guitarist Mick Ronson whose inspired playing and arrangements set him apart as a unique talent. “I would put him up there with the best I’ve ever worked with,” remarked Scott. “I think Ronno was better than any of the Beatles as a guitarist. His playing was much more from a feel point or melodic point of view.”

Famously using a stripped Gibson Les Paul Custom, Ronson’s trademark electric guitar tone was as much about his technique and approach as it was the equipment itself. “The equipment helps a little bit,” he points out in this interview, “but I think more often than not it’s in your own personality. It’s in your own makeup. It’s in your own fingers.”

In recognition of the album’s 50th anniversary Parlophone will be releasing a picture disc edition of the 2015 Hunky Dory remaster on January 7, 2022.

Pre-order it here.

“Out of the hits that I’ve had, I can’t underestimate its importance,” Peter Frampton says of “Do You Feel Like We Do.” Originally released as a six-minute studio cut on the guitarist’s second solo album, 1973’s Frampton’s Camel, the song became an instant classic thanks to the epic 14-minute version on his epochal 1976 live album, Frampton Comes Alive!

“That’s the version that helped break things wide open,” he says. “It sort of worked as the trailer for both the album and my concerts. ‘You want to know what Peter Frampton sounds like live? Listen to this!’”

"Woke up this morning..."

In preparation for Frampton’s Camel, Frampton assembled a band consisting of keyboardist Mick Gallagher, bassist Rick Wills and drummer John Siomos. “We did a lot of jamming back then,” he recalls. “We were a new band, and jamming was our way of figuring out our sound.”

One day, the guitarist came to rehearsal with his reel-to-reel tape machine, on which he’d recorded chord ideas and a melody for a new song. “I didn’t have much else to it,” he says. “We jammed a bit, and at one point somebody said, ‘Wind the tape back to three or four minutes in. You played a line that’s really cool.’ “That line turned out to be what I then used for the main hook riff. Then Mick started to play harmonies of the line on the keyboard.”

Stuck for a chorus, Frampton improvised what he considered to be a dummy lyric: “Do you feel like I do?” “It didn’t sound right, so I told the guys, ‘Don’t worry. I’ll come up with something better,’” he says. “Of course, I never did.”

After coming up with an A-to-E chord pattern for the verse, he wrote lyrics that summed up how he felt after a night of overindulgence: “Woke up this morning with a wine glass in my hand.” “They came right out,” he explains, “and they’re probably the most iconic lyrics I’ve ever written.”

Something's happening...

The band previewed the song at a few shows before recording it at New York City’s Electric Lady Studios. Frampton used his now famous 1954 Les Paul Custom electric guitar that he paired with a late-’50s Ampeg Echo Twin ampifier.

“That amp wasn’t designed for distortion, but it broke up beautifully and gave me a great sound,” he says. Getting the song on tape was relatively straightforward, but the band recorded two versions: one slower, one faster. “We thought the slower one was best, so that wound up on the album.”

Nobody in the guitarist’s camp or at his label thought the song was a hit. “It was a good FM deep track, and it got some play in various spots of the U.S.,” Frampton remembers. But over the next two years, during which time he released two more studio albums – 1974’s Somethin’s Happening and 1975’s Frampton – “Do You Feel Like We Do” began to stand out as an audience favorite.

“We closed the show with it, and we really started to draw it out and play with its dynamics,” he says. “The crowds seemed to love it more and more.” Adding to the excitement was his introduction of a talk box during one of the extended solo sections.

He first used the effects unit for the studio recording of “Show Me the Way,” but during his 1975 concerts he fully embraced the device. “People went nuts when I went to use the talk box,” Frampton says. “Hey, everybody needs a gimmick, and this was mine.”

Frampton is everywhere...

The release of Frampton Comes Alive! was a seismic cultural moment, and within months of the record’s appearance, Frampton went from playing theaters to selling out arenas. The double album sold in the millions, his posters adorned millions of teenagers’ bedrooms, and his presence on both AM and FM stations was a lock.

“I was everywhere,” he recalls. “It got to the point where I was sick of myself. I’d turn on the radio and hear myself. I’d change the station and land on myself again.”

Over the course of his career, Frampton never played a gig that didn’t include “Do You Feel Like We Do.”

“It’s my show closer, the ultimate capper to a concert,” he says. “What was really remarkable was when I would play with Lynyrd Skynyrd, I’d play ‘Do You Feel’ and they’d play ‘Free Bird,’ so you’d get the two longest FM songs in one night.”

Check out the awesome Gibson Custom Shop Peter Frampton "Phenix" Les Paul Custom at Guitar Center here.

Back in January, we reported Gibson’s announcement that a Jerry Cantrell signature Les Paul was on its way. Several months on and the Jerry Cantrell "Wino" Les Paul Custom has now been unveiled by the Custom Shop. A replica of the Alice in Chains guitarist’s Wine Red model, this finely crafted instrument has been given the full hand-aged treatment at Gibson’s Murphy Lab. Each guitar in the limited run of 100 has also been signed by Cantrell.

Priced at $8,999.00 the Jerry Cantrell "Wino" Les Paul Custom may not be the most utilitarian of instruments, but similar Custom Shop aged/signed Les Pauls such as the Adam Jones 1979 Les Paul Custom have already proven to be highly desirable collector’s items worthy of investment. As the closest thing to Cantrell’s own guitar these rarities are a little piece of rock ‘n’ roll history in their own right.

The Gibson Custom Shop began honoring notable Les Paul players in 1996, commencing with the Joe Perry Les Paul (what you might call a signature signature guitar!) 25 years on and the tradition has become ever more refined with collectible replica electric guitars inspired by the likes of Jimmy Page and Billy Gibbons similarly appearing as detailed works of art.

Unique to the Jerry Cantrell "Wino" Les Paul Custom is it’s aged Wine Red finish – a transparent color introduced to the Les Paul Custom in the mid ‘70s. And while even the earliest of these Wine Red Les Paul Customs are unlikely to cost anywhere near $8,999.00 at the moment, Cantrell’s signature model comes with a host of unique features that further set it apart.

Inspired by the artist’s original instrument and expanding the guitar’s palette of tone, an active Fishman Powerbridge piezo pickup-equipped bridge has been installed in addition to regular humbuckers (490R and 498T in this case). Naturally, the instrument’s controls have been customized to suit this unique pickup layout. In place of the bridge/rear pickup tone control, a third volume pot for the Powerbridge has been installed while a stereo jack allows its signal to be output separately. The remaining pot (normally the neck/front pickup tone) has been allocated as a master tone control.

Visit Gibson for more details.

In 1961, the now iconic single-cutaway ‘Black Beauty’ Les Paul Custom was revamped to incorporate the thin-bodied, double-cutaway design of the SG. By 1963, the name followed suit as "Les Paul" disappeared from the headstock. Issued with a white finish as standard, custom color examples from this period are exceptionally rare. 

Here, David Davidson of Well Strung Guitars in Farmingdale, NY shows us a custom-ordered model from '61 sporting 'reverse' two-tone livery.

One of the First

“This is a very early production Gibson SG-style Les Paul Custom from ’61. It’s one of the first of its type and the only black one I’ve seen from the era,” says David. “The original owner custom-ordered it in a black finish. He wasn’t a famous guitar player and he didn’t have any special connections to the factory, but in those days you just wrote Gibson a letter. And that’s what he did – he just asked them if they could make it in black. 

"It also has white plastic parts, which offset the custom black finish beautifully. It’s got that tuxedo look. When he first went to the music store to get it – the Ossining Music Center in upstate New York – he was not expecting it to have white appointments, because it was shown with black [plastic] parts in the catalog. He said when he first opened the case he was ‘surprised but happy’.

Excruciatingly Rare

“Some people don’t realise how excruciatingly rare custom color vintage Gibson guitars are – they’re far scarcer than Fender custom colors. I also know of a black two-pickup Standard with a white pickguard that was made. It’s out there somewhere. I wish I had it because I’d love to put the two of them together. I’ve often been asked if I’d sell this guitar, but it’s very dear to me. It’s irreplaceable, a one-off. 

"I’ve had some really great professional players look at this guitar, but it’s more of a collector’s piece. Most of the players who have tried it said that if they bought it they’d get it refretted because it’s got the small ‘fretless wonder’ frets. And that kills it for me! I wouldn’t ever want this one to get messed with.

“I love the way it’s aged and mellowed. Most of the gold is in good shape. There’s a little bit of verdigris, but it’s pretty much intact. The yellowing on the headstock is not too severe – it’s actually a very beautiful contrast and it doesn’t look out of place with the yellowed binding on the sides of the fingerboard. Normally, as you play, the clear[coat] wears off, but the original owner didn’t really take it out on the road so to speak – he was playing lounge music in hotel bars and clubs up in the Catskills.

“Gibson did such a beautiful job on these guitars with the appointments. Not only with the gold-plated hardware, but it also has the ebony ’board [Standards have rosewood] and mother-of-pearl inlays, which have a much prettier look than the ‘mother-of-toilet-seat’ material – it’s much more reflective and the white trim really makes it pop.

PAF Tone

“It sounds really good. The PAF covers have never been off. In fact, the guitar has never needed to go to a shop for servicing, which is good because it means nobody has been able to mess with it. They’re double-black PAFs with the shorter magnets [by late 1959, Gibson began using a shorter Alnico magnet in PAFs]. 

If you play this guitar through a big amplifier with gain and let the PAFs open up they are really very sweet. When you dial back on the volume to about 8, it gets soft and warm and subtle sounding – great jazz tone. The out-of-phase tone in the middle position is wonderful, and with the volume backed off it gives you a Strat-like in-between sound. It’s a pretty versatile-sounding guitar.

Fretless Wonder

“It plays really well. The neck on this guitar feels very much the same as a regular 1960 single-cutaway Les Paul Custom. So, it’s not the very flat 1961 profile yet – it has more of a rounded 1960 feel. Jumbo fretwire appeared on Standards in ’59, but not on the ‘fretless wonder’ Customs. Gibson used these smaller frets on the Custom from its release [in 1954] pretty much up through to ’63 when the model was redesignated as an SG (with no Les Paul decals). Then they started to use the larger frets, which made a huge difference to the playability.

For a rock player wanting to bend strings all the time it’s not a terribly playable guitar, but if you’re just riffing jazz then it’s great. The ‘fretless wonder’ idea was that it has a fast action because if the fret is low you never have to pull your finger very far off the fretboard.

Gibson’s Heyday

“I think people can be quick to blow these models off because they’re a follow-up to the master of all Gibson solidbodies – the single-cutaway Les Pauls – although they originally sold many more SGs than they did single-cutaway Les Pauls. But these are still part of Gibson’s heyday. 

"They were giving up on the original single-cut ‘fretless wonder’ but kept a lot of the same components. And with this SG-style Les Paul Custom in the ‘black beauty’ finish, you can really see the evolution. It helps tell the story.”

Check out more incredible vintage rarities like this at Well Strung Guitars

Gibson has teamed up with Peter Frampton to create the new “Phenix” Les Paul Custom VOS guitar.

First teased back in January, with few accompanying details, the new Custom Shop "Phenix" is a replica of Frampton's legendary Les Paul Custom of the same name, which was pictured on the cover of his blockbuster 1976 album, Frampton Comes Alive!, and was thought to be lost forever in a 1980 cargo plane crash, only to be miraculously recovered in 2011. 

Like the original, the new Custom Shop Phenix features a mahogany body and neck, and an ebony fingerboard with custom pearl inlays.

It features three open coil Gibson Custom humbuckers, with custom wiring, a 3-way toggle switch, and volume and tone knobs for the neck and bridge pickups, and another pair of knobs specifically wired to the middle pickup.

Other appointments include gold hardware, Grover tuners, Schaller Strap Locks, and Frampton's signature on the headstock.

“My brand-new Gibson Les Paul Custom VOS has arrived, and boy is it good,” Frampton said in a statement. “I couldn’t be more pleased with the look and sound.

"Gibson has gone that extra mile in every area to make this feel and sound the closest to my original, storied Phenix Les Paul Custom guitar. The neck and weight of this mahogany guitar will amaze you at how great it feels and how light it is (and it’s even a hair lighter than the Phenix). This is the real deal.”

The Gibson Peter Frampton signature “Phenix” Les Paul Custom VOS is available now  – in an Ebony finish – for $6,999.

For more info on the guitar, stop by gibson.com.

Epiphone has teamed up with blues-rock guitar hero Jared James Nichols for a new signature guitar, the “Gold Glory” Les Paul Custom.

A limited-edition version of Nichols's first signature Epiphone Les Paul – the "Old Glory" Les Paul Custom – the "Gold Glory" features a '55-style Les Paul Custom body outfitted with a striking, aged Double Gold finish.

Like its Black-finished predecessor, the Gold Glory features a single Seymour Duncan P-90 Dogear bridge pickup – with individual volume and tone knobs – a mahogany neck boasting an ebony fingerboard with traditional block inlays, and Grover Rotomatic tuners.

"’Gold Glory’ is an icon of a guitar,” Nichols said in a press release. “Between the beauty of the tone, and glitter of the gold, it is breathtaking and bold. It’s simplistic, and powerful, a complete classic, yet rooted in today. 

"I am honored to continue my ‘Glory Days’ with this incredible new signature model. I cannot wait to get this guitar out into the world and into the hands of players looking to find their own unique voice. Simply put, ‘Gold Glory’ inspires me to play, create, and perform at my very best."

The Epiphone Jared James Nichols “Gold Glory” Les Paul Custom is available now – with an EpiLite case included – for $699. 

For more info on the guitar, head on over to epiphone.com.

In a new interview with Guitar World, Al Di Meola revealed that he is planning on selling his legendary '71 black Les Paul Custom guitar for charity.

When asked if he put the guitar, along with other treasures in his collection, on display during his A Fine Taste and Music house events – where fans were able to visit Di Meola at his New Jersey home for a night of food, wine, conversation, one-on-one performances, and more – Di Meola answered in the affirmative.

"Oh, yeah. The ’71, which weighs about 400 pounds," Di Meola joked. "That’s the one I started using with Chick Corea. Which I’m selling, by the way, for the right price.

Pressed to confirm the potential sale, Di Meola said "Yeah. I have a little charity on the side, and I’m going to let go of a lot of my electrics because I’m playing less electric these days and I’m trying to lighten up the collection a bit. So if we can get the right price…"

In other Di Meola news, in the same interview, the fleet-fingered guitar legend also said that he would be releasing a new guitar trio record with John McLaughlin and Paco de Lucía in September. 

When asked if it would be a 40th anniversary reissue of the trio's legendary live album, Friday Night in San Francisco, Di Meola said "No, not really. It’s going to be a show from the same venue… but the next night. Saturday Night in San Francisco.

"For 40 years, I’ve had the other night that no-one knew about except for the people that went to the show. In fact, even John didn’t remember we played a second night. [laughs]

"But I have the tapes, and I had them professionally baked to have them restored. And it turns out they’re phenomenal. And we played all different tunes. On the first record I had a song called 'Mediterranean Sundance.' This night there’s a song called 'Splendido Sundance.' And there’s three unaccompanied solo pieces. So you’re not getting the same record twice."

"So it's a pretty incredible thing. I'm looking forward to people hearing it. And then hopefully at some point we’ll get to bring the dinners back as well. So this year is shaping up to be pretty busy."

This is pretty much the holy grail of Santana guitars. It’s the one that generated the fiery leads on “Black Magic Woman/Gypsy Queen,” “Oye Como Va,” and, indeed, just about everything else on Abraxas, as well as the inspired discs that followed in its wake. 

Carlos purchased this refinished maple-top Les Paul at Prune Music in San Francisco in 1970, shortly after his group’s breakthrough at Woodstock. It was a replacement for the red Gibson SG he played at the music festival.  

“That SG wouldn’t stay in tune, so I destroyed it,” Santana says. “At the time, if I wanted a new guitar, I had to ask the band, ’cause we were all paying for it. The band didn’t want to get me a new guitar, so I destroyed the SG. Then I had to get a new one.”

In 1975, Carlos began his relationship with Yamaha, and the Gibson saw less use. However, he notes, “this guitar was my main workhorse for at least seven albums. It’s got the tone, the feel. You grab it and it’s ready to go.”

“All I ever wanted to do was play guitar, and it’s taken me many different places – physically and mentally,” Peter Frampton writes in his new autobiography, Do You Feel Like I Do?: A Memoir. 

Written with Alan Light, the tell-all elaborates thoroughly on that statement, as the guitarist reveals his career highs with Humble Pie and his monster solo breakthrough album, Frampton Comes Alive!. and his personal lows, including his struggles with substance abuse and recent battle with the muscle disease inclusion body myositis. 

In addition to sharing stories about his friendships with artists like George Harrison and David Bowie, Frampton discusses his own relationship with the guitar, including one very special – and now quite famous – instrument: his mid-1950s Les Paul Custom “Black Beauty.”

That guitar is the subject of this excerpt from the forthcoming memoir. In it, Frampton tells the story behind how he recovered the Custom years after it was presumed lost in a plane crash.

Frampton acquired the guitar in 1970, while he was a member of Humble Pie, from his friend Marc Mariana. As the guitar’s owner, Mariana had switched out the guitar’s P-90s with humbuckers and sanded down the neck. 

Frampton loved the Black Beauty and made it his main guitar, using it for Humble Pie’s breakthrough album, Performance: Rockin’ the Fillmore, and his own Frampton Comes Alive!, where it appears on the cover.

The guitar continued to serve him until 1980. That November, Frampton and his band narrowly escaped Panama after they were forced to cancel a concert there, incurring the wrath of then-president Manuel Noriega. The group’s gear was less lucky: The cargo plane carrying it crashed on takeoff from Curaçao.

In fact, the Custom was among four guitars that survived with minimal damage, though this information was never passed along to Frampton.

The Black Beauty was subsequently sold to a musician in Caracas, Venezuela who played it for 15 years. Its origins were finally discovered when his son brought it to a local luthier named Donald Balentina, who was also an immigrations officer at the Curaçao airport. 

Balentina instantly knew the identity of the guitar and made contact with Frampton through the guitarist’s manager, Lisa Jenkins. But when he told the owner’s son he knew of the guitar’s background, the boy fled with the instrument. Frampton’s excerpt picks up the story in 2011, two years later.

Two years go by and I thought I’d lost the guitar forever. But then the son of the current “owner” came back to Donald’s place again. He asked him, “So how much are you going to pay me for this guitar? I want to buy another one.” 

Donald asked, “What do you want for it?” And the boy said $5,000 – which was pretty close to the price of a nice new Gibson Custom Shop Les Paul. He said, “Give me your number and I’ll contact Mr. Frampton.”

Donald called Lisa Jenkins to let us know that he had made contact with the boy again, and he now wanted to sell the guitar. Lisa immediately started talking with Donald to facilitate the return of my old Black Beauty. Lisa suggested that we all meet in Nashville at the hotel where I always stayed when I drove in from Cincinnati. 

But we think Donald was worried that we were going to have whoever brought the guitar back arrested in Miami by the FBI, because it was still technically stolen merchandise.

I had no such intent – all I ever wanted was to have my lost treasure back in my hands, and that it wasn’t going to cost me an arm and a leg. This goes on and on; he’s scared to bring it, and then he said that he couldn’t pay for the guitar himself, anyway.

Donald went to Curaçao’s Minister of Tourism and explained the situation. He said, “Look, it will be great if Peter Frampton gets his guitar back after so many years, and the island’s Minister of Tourism gets to be the savior!” I guess he loved the idea, because in the end, both Donald and the Minister of Tourism flew up from Curaçao, bringing the guitar with them.

Before they got on a plane, though, they were still worried that I was going to have them arrested. Lisa told them to call the hotel in Nashville we had booked for them, and once the hotel confirmed that they did have reservations, the trip was on. I could then, and only then, begin to see a light at the end of a 32-year-long tunnel.

We had three cameras set up in the suite waiting. My tour manager, Donnie Lewis, had a friend stationed there who does personal security. We had no idea how this was going to play out.

The two very excited travelers came in and everyone was introduced. The thing I noticed first was the case that was covering the guitar. When I got my very first guitar, the case was just a plastic cover and a zip; it kept the dust off, but it wasn’t protective. Well, that’s what the Gibson was in, I swear.

Donald had read everything anyone had ever said about this guitar. He handed it to me, and it’s a very light Les Paul, so before I even took the cover off I could feel the weight of it. He said, “It’s light, isn’t it?” 

Without even looking, I could just feel it was mine. I finally got the cover off and it was just like putting on an old pair of extremely comfy shoes. “Yes, it’s mine.” And there she was! Back home!

Once the expletives, cheers, and thank yous had all died down a bit, I was left in this wonderful kind of shock with a shit-eating grin. During the drive over to the Gibson Custom Shop, I couldn’t help feeling I was having a weird dream and I would wake up any minute. We had some fine guitar aficionados waiting to see and check this baby out.

All my friends at Gibson – Rick Gembar, SR VP/GM; Mike McGuire, head of the Custom Shop; and George Gruhn and Walter Carter – were there studying it, taking this plate off and that knob off. They finally agreed that it was a 1954/’55 Black Beauty retrofitted with three humbucking pickups (the serial number had been sanded off before Marc Mariana gave it to me).

I got the guitar back for the last couple days of rehearsal before the second half of the Frampton Comes Alive! 35 tour, but the band didn’t know I had it yet. I had my back to them as I put it on. We never run through “Do You Feel” or any of the older songs we play every night, so I casually said, “Let’s run through the beginning of ‘Do You Feel,’ just so I can check my sound.” 

I counted it in, we started to play the intro, and I turned around – and I could see the band had a look of surprise in their eyes, which were now huge, “Hey what is that? It’s the sound. That’s the sound of the record! That’s your guitar!” 

They realized what it was just from listening to me play the intro; the difference in sound is that noticeable. And then we played through just about everything off Frampton Comes Alive! that afternoon. Now we all had shit-eating grins! That was a rehearsal I will never forget. Thank you, Curaçao!

I had to leave the guitar at Gibson so they could bring her up to speed. I wanted all the scars left as is, but anything that didn’t work properly, like the tuners or any bad electronics, had to be replaced.

I can’t thank all my friends enough for donating original pieces for the guitar, like “Patent Applied For” pickups and ’50s capacitors and volume and tone knobs, some still in their new old boxes. We call those beautiful old parts new old stock – NOS.

There are still burn marks, dents and tons of other scratches, but that’s the way she will stay. I only wish we could sit down together, have a nice cuppa tea, and find out what, when, how, and where she’s been for the last 30 years!

It was finally ready by the time we played the Beacon in New York. Anthony Mason had already done an interview with me for CBS about the return of the guitar, so he was there that night, filming me on the bus before the show. He asked how I felt about playing it onstage, and I said, “I’m scared shitless that I’ll make a mistake!”

Right before “Do You Feel,” which is always the last number of the set, I walked off and the stage went dark. My tech brought out the guitar, placed it in the middle of the stage on a stand, pitch dark, and then all the spotlights hit it at once – bam! The crowd went nuts; she was the star of the show, they could see what she was. 

I picked her up and we started to play “Do You Feel” – and I did make a slight mistake in the intro, but they edited it out of the CBS Sunday Morning piece. The Phenix wasn’t nervous, but I was. Thank you, Anthony.

Years after we had returned from South America in 1980, Barbara and I stayed over the weekend in New York, and on Monday morning, before we checked out, I had Good Morning America on and I heard my name. I sat up and it was the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous guy, Robin Leach.

He said, “News has finally reached me. I now have the true story about Peter Frampton escaping from Panama and Noriega’s troops.” What? “Back in 1980, a well-placed call was made to the White House, as Frampton had connections there” – yeah, because I’d been to the White House once!

He said that a military jet with troops had been sent down to Panama, that there was a rescue mission and Frampton, his band, and crew had all been rescued by the CIA and brought back to Andrews Air Force Base. We were in hysterics! We had gotten out of there all on our own. 

The American consulate wasn’t a lot of help, if I remember. I just couldn’t believe my ears hearing him spew all this bullshit. It was pretty exciting stuff, but it was totally untrue.

It’s wonderful to have my old Les Paul back because for so many years after the crash, fans would ask me, “Is that the one you played on Frampton Comes Alive!?” and I’d have to say no. 

When I moved to Nashville in the ’90s, Gibson’s Mike McGuire suggested we work on a replacement. I was thrilled! He and I and many great people at Gibson worked for about a year on building one that was as close to the original as I could remember.

I played it for years, but when the Phenix arrived back and I compared the old and the new, it was no contest. They both sounded great, but the Phenix just sounds and plays like the Phenix! When I announced her at the Beacon Theatre show, I could see this was her night in the limelight.

• Peter Frampton's Do You Feel Like I Do?: A Memoir was written by Frampton with Alan Light and is out now via Hachette Books.

On October 30, 13 Gibson Adam Jones 1979 Les Paul Custom guitars – together worth $95,000 – were stolen from a Sweetwater Music truck at the Flying J Travel Center in Whiteland, Indiana.

Now, Gibson and Adam Jones have reportedly decided to re-manufacture each of the stolen guitars for their buyers.

According to Guitar.com, Gibson and Adam Jones sent the buyers of the stolen guitars a letter that read “For many of Adam’s fans, these limited-edition guitars are the guitars of their dreams, and this is probably true of you as well.

“Therefore, we wanted to let you know that we, Gibson and Adam together, have decided to make the guitars again for you.”

“In order to distinguish them from the ones that got stolen," the letter continues, "We are going to add a special notation on the headstock, something we believe will make your guitar one of the 13 most special and collectable guitars of the run. We apologize in advance for the suspense, but we prefer to surprise you!”

Gibson told affected customers they should expect their re-made guitars to arrive in February. 

Gibson had previously published the serial numbers of the 13 stolen guitars, which remain at large. They can be seen below.

Gibson Adam Jones 1979 Les Paul Custom Aged and Signed

• 73529531 #42
• 73529531 #69
• 73529531 #41
• 73529531 #71

Gibson Adam Jones 1979 Les Paul Custom VOS

• 73529111
• 73529047
• 73529114
• 73529145
• 73529072
• 73529030
• 73529091
• 73529126
• 73529024

Anyone with information on the stolen guitars is being urged to contact Detective Kenny Polley of the Whiteland Police Department at KPolley@whitelandpd.us or (317) 535-8100.

$95,000 worth of Gibson Adam Jones 1979 Les Paul Custom guitars – 13 in total – have been stolen, Gibson has announced.

The pallet of guitars was stolen from a Sweetwater Music truck at the Flying J Travel Center in Whiteland, Indiana on October 30. The truck was en route to Sweetwater's headquarters in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Gibson and Sweetwater have said that they believe the theft was premeditated.

“Somehow out of a truck full of guitars, this ONE pallet was singled out and stolen at a truck stop,” Phil Rich, Sweetwater's Chief Supply Chain And Merchandising Officer, said in a joint statement with Gibson. “We feel this person/s knew exactly what to look for and when.”

Announced last week, the Gibson Adam Jones 1979 Les Paul Custom guitar is available in two versions: a run of 79 – each aged in exacting detail to match Jones' own '79 Les Paul Custom by the Gibson Custom Shop's Murphy Lab, and signed and numbered by Jones – and a run of 179 VOS replicas featuring exclusive silkscreen artwork on the rear of the headstock, designed by Jones and Joyce Su.

Four of the 13 guitars that were taken were the $9,999 models, while the other nine were the VOS editions.

“These guitars were the dream guitars of 13 Gibson and Adam Jones fans, who had been patiently waiting for them to be delivered,” said Gibson CMO Cesar Gueikian. “We have decided to publish the serial numbers of the 13 stolen guitars and are appealing to all of Gibson’s fans to keep an eye out for them and let us know if they surface.”

“Our fans should ask any third-party sellers for a serial number before purchasing to be sure they are not being sold one of the stolen guitars,” Gueikian continued.

The serial numbers of the stolen guitars are as follows:

Gibson Adam Jones 1979 Les Paul Custom Aged and Signed

• 73529531 #42
• 73529531 #69
• 73529531 #41
• 73529531 #71

Gibson Adam Jones 1979 Les Paul Custom VOS

• 73529111
• 73529047
• 73529114
• 73529145
• 73529072
• 73529030
• 73529091
• 73529126
• 73529024

Anyone with information on the stolen guitars is being urged to contact Detective Kenny Polley of the Whiteland Police Department at KPolley@whitelandpd.us or (317) 535-8100.

Gibson has unveiled its long-awaited, highly-anticipated Adam Jones 1979 Les Paul Custom guitar.

The first offering in what Gibson promises will be a “multi-year partnership" with the Tool guitarist, the Silverburst stunner will be available in two versions. The first is a run of 79 Adam Jones 1979 Les Paul Custom replicas, each aged in exacting detail to match Jones' own '79 Les Paul Custom by the Gibson Custom Shop's Murphy Lab, and signed and numbered by Jones.

The second version is a run of 179 replicas featuring exclusive silkscreen artwork on the rear of the headstock, designed by Jones and Joyce Su.

Like Jones' Les Paul, the replica sports a Seymour Duncan Distortion bridge pickup, a Dimarzio volume pot and custom capacitors. Even the unique neck profile, diamond-shaped strap buttons and the mirror Jones affixed to the headstock of his Les Paul were all also painstakingly recreated.

The Gibson Adam Jones 1979 Les Paul Custom is available now. The Aged & Signed version will sell for $9,999, while the Vintage Old Stock replica version rings up at $5,999. The guitars come with Silverburst hardcases, also designed by Jones and Joyce Su.

You can check out the guitar in more detail below in The Witness, an animated short film for which Jones composed and performed the music with Tool bandmates Justin Chancellor and Danny Carey.

For more info on the guitar, stop by gibson.com.

I was doing research for one of my Whack Job columns when I came across a link that lead to a link that lead to some thumbnails – but no shots of the headstock – of a brand new, green Les Paul with a price of $225, shipped directly from China. Hmm.

We’ve all heard about counterfeit guitars, so for a $225 gamble, I decided to see if this was one of those knock-offs.

The guitar arrived by courier in a black sedan – all very Men In Black-ish. I opened the sealed, toxic, styrofoam sarcophagus, and, sure enough, right on the headstock is the Gibson logo. Etched into the trussrod cover is “Les Paul Custom,” and on the back of the headstock are the words “Made in U.S.A.”, along with an embossed nine-digit serial number. Very credible. Very wrong.

Playability & Sound

As you might expect, this guitar is straight-up crap. The frets are scratchy, the fingerboard is dry and it won’t stay in tune. The pickups are low-output, anemic, and microphonic as all hell. Suspicions confirmed. These guitars are frauds. They may look authentic and cool from a distance, but they will never play with the class and distinction of the real thing.

Value

My counterfeit job is of an actual, limited-run model the Gibson Custom Shop produced in 2012. Gibson made 35 of what they called “The Green Widow,” and the retail price was around $16,000. 

I guess I got a deal at $225, but then again, it might take an investment of $1,500 or more to get the faux green widow to play and sound almost as good as a starter Epiphone. But, of course, no amount of tech work could “fix” the sense of feeling dirty for having a fake in my possession.

So Guess What I Did?

Well, the $225 was a good investment for me, because I now had first-hand knowledge of how cosmetically realistic these copies can be. But I didn’t want to keep the guitar, or donate it to a needy kid or organization, because I didn’t want the fake to exist any longer. I decided to smash it. 

I thought about the many ways to do it – such as gift it to a Who tribute band for its auto-destruction reenactments – but Ryan Strader, who works at the Starving Musician in Santa Clara, California, won the prize. Ryan suggested putting it under a 20-ton compressor, and filming the “execution.” 

And that’s what we did. At an undisclosed location, we snuck this aberration of a guitar into a machine shop, plugged it into my 50-watt Marshall JCM800, and proceeded to send this bogus baby back to the screaming-banshee hell cave from whence it came. No tears.

Say No To Thugs

Counterfeits of Gibson, Fender, Gretsch, Rickenbacker, PRS, Martin and other models are rampant. I’m sure the manufacturers know about these websites, but it must be brutal to try and stop offshore fakes. Don’t buy from these crooks – unless, like me, you’re plotting a merciless slaying.

Feel free to contact me at rtcarleton@gmail.com with photos of your rare weirdos.

Looking to add some world-class bling to your rig? Look no further than this none-more-flashy 2009 Gibson Zakk Wylde Les Paul Custom Bullseye that just popped up for sale on Reverb.com.

This particular Wylde signature Les Paul - which remains unplayed, according to its listing - is encrusted with 4,000 of "the world's finest" Swarovski 4mm crystals, and features hardware that's been re-plated with a coat of 24-carat gold.

According to the listing, the guitar was purchased new by its vendor, and then customized for a fashion event. The crystal and gold handiwork was done by U.K.-based luthiers Kim Webber and Graham Baker.

Unsurprisingly, given its decidedly flashy touches, this Les Paul doesn't come cheap. It's currently valued at $11,429.86.

For those who may possess a world-class collection of Zakk Wylde signature gear already though, this guitar is probably the perfect addition!

To view the full listing, head on over to reverb.com.