CG-MayJun16-ISSUU

just know there’s gotta be something wrong
hits and misses? That is something that you
in the mid-60s, what would be prevalent even
because somebody decided to get rid of it. It
grapple with every time you sit down and try
to this day. The way that a modern guitar player
goes against logic as to why you’re interested
to design a guitar to minimize that and focus
would use an amplifier on stage, would totally
in buying it. The attitude of how you want to
more on the hits part of it. But that’s what I think
blow their minds. If you told Leo Fender, “This is
use a tool is just about everything. When you’re
modern designers keep trying to do, which is
how people are going to use your guitar. You’re
selling gear, you have to remember you just
so cool, and thank God we have people who
gonna have Keith Urban, Prince, John 5, and
can’t keep everything. If you’re not using it –
really want to pioneer that.
Bruce Springsteen, they’re all gonna be playing
if it’s not a tool that resonates with you then
your Telecaster by the way”.
you should just move it on cause someone else
We love the designs from the late 40s through
could really enjoy it.
the 50s. Those designs were absolutely
The things you learn are the obvious ones. You
amazing. They had no idea what was coming
learn about wood, the different tones you get
CG My friend also owns a Blackface Vibrolux
Reverb you sold. After trying a couple of vintage
Strats, the guitar that sounded best through it
was a JS1200. How much have the various
vintage instruments you’ve played and owned
influenced the JS line?
刀 䔀 䄀 䐀 夀 吀 伀 唀 倀 䜀 刀 䄀 䐀 䔀 㼀
JS A lot. I remember owning several 50’s Strats
and always coming face to face with the fact
that they have serious road blocks in them for
performing songs in my catalog, that stop me
from using them on stage. But they have these
other qualities - all guitars should be this simple
and have such a big, ambient sound to them.
That’s always been the cool thing about Strat’s
continued from page 26
collection.
CG Do you still own your Echoplex EP-2?
JS That thing is held together by love at this
point - and some mojo. I remember being in the
studio with John and we wanted to get some
really crazy tape echo magic. We sent the
already-recorded guitar part back out into this
Echoplex so I could manually work it. We had
this old tape that was wonderfully saturated
with thousands of hours of guitar playing. It
was the coolest sound of effects you could
ever imagine, it just sounded so beautiful.
There isn’t a plug-in or digital effect that
would ever be as complex or wonderful. It
always puts a smile on my face when I hear
that part of the song.
Sometimes the vintage stuff is just old, and
other times it has the secret sauce flowing
in it. With old vintage stuff, it’s very much
like brand new guitars. You go into any music
store, find a popular brand, they’ve got three
of them hanging on the wall and you play all
three and go, “This is the good one”. Vintage
gear is the same way, I don’t know what the hit
or miss number is, but let’s say it’s one in ten
items is the thing when it comes to something
where human hands did most of the fashioning
of it - that’s electric and acoustic guitars. That
means that most of the old stuff is simply old
When you’re selling gear, you
have to remember you just can’t
keep everything. If you’re not
using it – if it’s not a tool that
resonates with you then you
should just move it on cause
someone else could really
enjoy it.
and it never got good. But the stuff that was
good, just got better. That gray Echoplex was
one of the winners. Even though that’s a highly
manufactured product; it’s not something you’d
consider hand crafted. But that thing always
has a tone.
CG A friend of mine picked up a bunch of
vintage gear you’ve sold through Bananas At
Large in Marin County. How do you decide it’s
time to let something go?
JS Their clientele is very intelligent, they
understand that these tools formerly used
by professionals show up from time to
time and they’ve got scars - they’ve been
through some Rock ‘n Roll battles. For me,
it’s like a tool I don’t want to use any more.
But for somebody else, it’s exactly what
they’ve been waiting for. When I pick up a
used guitar or something like that, I always
think, “Why is someone selling it”? You
and Teles - they pass on this ambience that
translates into excitement for the audience. We
know the pickups are weak and they’re almost
always single coil so there’s noise involved,
there’s issues right? At the same time there’s
an intrinsic excitement, the voodoo part of the
simple design of those guitars. They can be
screwed together and unscrewed in less than
twenty minutes and sound perfect every time
you put them back together. That’s a hallmark
of brilliant design; you just can’t get around it.
Thinking about it that way and then looking at
the JS guitars and you go, “Well OK, the scale
length is the same and yes it is a bolt-on neck”
so there are things about the guitars that are
pretty similar. I’ve learned about the things that
can happen with a classic design. If you’ve
owned a hundred Strats, you’ve owned a
hundred Strats that sound totally different from
each other and you’ve scratched your head
like, “How’s that even possible?” If that first
statement I said, where this design is so classic
is true, why does it provide such a variety of
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