Fender Custom Shop ‘62 Jazzmaster Relic Vintage

This is a great looking guitar, and more importantly, an great SOUNDING guitar. This is a relic I would likely buy. It's not just the looks. As the review states - it FEELS warn in, and that is an important thing. I don't know what it is about these Jazzmasters, but you can always here every note of every string. It just rings so true. When both pickups are engaged it sound huge. I love it.

John5 at Fender University

John 5 makes country guitar cool. Twang has never sounded so good. All of my fellow rock guys and girls out there, check out the country shred on John5's last few albums and tell me you are not impressed.

Fender know this fact, and have enlisted John5 as one of their special guests at Fender Univerity 2009.

Fender University Spring 2009 class is about to start. Fender University is a new program open to guitar and bass players worldwide. The program runs from March 4 through March 9 and includes the following:

* Attendance for five days and five nights at Fender University.
Hotel accommodations: Full service hotel—the Mission Inn Hotel & Spa, Riverside, Calif.
* All meals during your stay.
* Your very own exclusive, limited edition Fender American Standard Series instrument.
* All ground transportation while at Fender University. Airfare not included.
* Behind-the-scenes tour of the state-of-the-art Fender manufacturing facility and famed Fender Custom Shop.
* Personal tour of the Fender Center Museum and Fullerton Museum featuring the Leo Fender exhibit.
* 8+ workshop hours, jamming and one-on-one instruction from Fender staff, clinicians and artists.
* Priceless meet-and-greet moments with some of Fender’s closest friends and legends.
* All the school supplies you need—lots of cool stuff!
* VIP pass to all festivities and the Fender University commencement party.

Among the special guests at Fender University’s Spring 2009 Session will be John 5.

If you are interested in enrolling at Fender University, the cost is $6,500 per student. If March is too soon, there’s a Fall Session coming up. Click here for more information.

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Why the relic fad should just die.

I am completely over this fascination with relic or road worn guitars. I don't mind them as a tribute to an iconic guitar owned by a famous guitarist (for example the Rory Gallagher Strat), but as a marketing gimmick? Fender at NAMM is launching the new entry level Relic series titled Road Worn. Here is what they have to say:

Some things just get cooler with age. It’s especially true of electric guitars and basses—they develop an unmistakable mojo that makes them look cooler, sound better and feel even more comfortable than when they were brand new. Hence the winter 2009 arrival of Fender’s new Road Worn series—Stratocaster, Telecaster, Precision Bass and Jazz Bass guitars that, while new, are designed to look like they’ve borne the wear, tear, blood, sweat and beers of thousands of miles on the road.

Now here is what I have to say:

This is the most meaningless way to make yourself feel important and "legitimate" as a guitarist as you can go. There is no character in these guitars, they all look the same. Part of the joy of having a beat up guitar is getting it to look that way. If you buy it like that from the factory, you don't live and grow with the guitar you just bought over time. It's like adopting a 10 year old with scars. You don't get the funny story about the kid falling out of the tree or scraping their knee learning how to skateboard, you just get a banged up kid.

My two main guitars are full of stories. They have been on the road. They have lived. One has a giant crack on the neck's finish from me throwing it into my amp and the end of the gig. That was the same gig I had a fat chick pour a beer on my head because I turned down her "invitation" to "party". My other main guitar has a matte finish on it that has been rubbed off by my right arm from too many hot night in hot bars in country New South Wales, Australia. Not to mention the countless dings and scratches that have happened from onstage (and offstage) mishaps.

What happened to these guitars was natural, an evolutionary process of myself as a guitarist and a performer, and the bonding between a man and his musical instrument. The guitar wears in to your playing, your body, your touch. This cannot be done from a factory. This can not be achieved without putting in the effort, the energy, the time, blood sweat and tears, the passion, everything it takes to be a real musician.

These guitars have no soul.

Seriously, if you are going out to buy a brand new PRS for example, and you get to the shop and they try to sell you at full price one with dints and rubbed off paint at full price, what would you think? Would you buy it?

I know I wouldn't. So why should trashing the guitar deliberately be any different? In my mind it isn't.

Image: Stephen Poff

Perfect Combinations

First, I apologise for the delay between posts. I'm still very busy, and will post as much as I can while I keep working on my professional projects before I fly overseas to Cambodia for two weeks. Cambodia is not know for their internet capabilities so posting while over there will be a little scarce. I'll see what I can do.

Anyway, onto my post today. I came across this video today, and this post the other day that really got me thinking about tone.

When I think of standard tones that I love, I always think of an amp/guitar combo. Some guitars just sound better when they are matched with the right amp. And a lot of people seem to know this, and it is the basis of many a "standard" tone for guitar music.

But the main reason I think these combinations become standards is not because of the one sound. But becasue of their versatility. The Telecatser / Blues Deville combo in the video above can be used for almost any type of music. It can provide such a wide scope of musical tones, it's a verative swiss army knife.

And so is a Les Paul into a Marshall JCM.

This is my tonal mecca. But as nice as these combinations are, the fact is they sound better in the mix, with other instruments around them. I guess you could say they play nice with others. They don't overpower, but then they don't get drowned out. The just slide on and do their job.

Are there any other classic combinations you can think of that have the same classic appeal and versatility?

Hendrix’s Burned Up Strat Goes For $495,000US

I meant to post this on Friday but I have been so very busy. Jimi Hendrix's guitar that he set alight at Astoria in Finsbury Park, north London, in March 1967 recently went under the hammer. The lucky winner was guitar collector Daniel Boucher (not pictured with the guitar, that's the original owner). It went for a cool US$495,000.

I've got to say, for a guitar that has been on fire, it seems to be in fairly good condition. I would have expected the pickups and pick guard to be in worse shape than they are.

The new owner had the following to say:

“I thought I’d have to pay a little bit more for it, actually. I am going to play it, I hope some of it rubs off on me.”

Cool, what ever you saved on the "cheap" price you got, you can give it to me. Obviously you won't miss it.

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