My first electric guitar was a 1961 Les Paul SG Junior. It was sold to finance a refinished 1968 Les Paul Custom in Tokyo after a couple of years. However, I got back to playing old SGs in the mid-'90s first a 1961 Standard with a sideway tremolo and then a 1965 SG, which I loved the tone of. The 1961 SG was the more expensive of the two with the PAF pickups, etc., but I found that I preferred the tone of the 1965 that I picked up cheaply in Tokyo a lot more maybe this was because of the way the strings were attached to the body via the Maestro tremolo unit. Alas, I dont have either of those guitars any more (and didnt I sell them so cheap .) but the 1965 SG is much missed for its very open sound. That guitar was acoustically quite loud, a real livewire. Someone told me that Carlos Santana played "Samba Pa Ti" on his early '60s SG Special. The harmonics on my SG sounded, to my ears, not dissimilar despite the obvious P-90 coloring of that tone. Eric Clapton said, when we were doing the research for the Christie's 2004 catalog, that the March, 1968, "Crossroads" on Wheels of Fire was played on his cherry-red 335 - but, to be honest, I am not convinced. To my ears, it sounds like a mahogany guitar his Firebird or more likely the painted SG known as The Fool...
I am the first to admit that if someone did a blindfold test on me of recordings with a reissue Historic Les Paul and an original 1959 Les Paul, I would not always be able to tell the difference, even on live recordings. This is because there are so many factors that affect the final outcome of the recorded tone. The variables are infinite the amp, the strings, the pick, the player (most importantly), as well as pedal effects (if any), the room, the microphones, and of an increasing importance, the studio processing. That is listening to the recorded guitar tone as an outsider. On the other hand, if I am the player, the position is a bit different. If you live long enough with a person, say your family, you get to know the person at both conscious and subconscious levels. The ability of humans to distinguish faces of fellow humans is apparently nothing short of miraculous. This is done at subconscious levels. You dont consciously go, Erm, in the case of James, the relative position of his nose to his mouth is such and such, you just know it. The same goes with human voices. There are voices that you automatically recognize, voices that you find familiar in everyday life, and voices that are uniquely identifiable, such as with well known singers or actors. In some cases, guitarists, particularly blues guitarists, acquire voices in their lead guitar playing. When you hear a single bended note and say it sounds like B.B. or Albert, you are in that realm...
I told you that I was in a number of very nice vintage guitar shops in Tokyo on my trip there last summer [article] and that buying guitars in Tokyo nowadays need not be an expensive affair. Let's continue that thread. I was in this particularly well-stocked shop in Tokyo trying out two player condition Gibsons on a very hot Tokyo afternoon. Surrounded by an army of lovely looking historic guitars trying out some old wood that the previous owners had done things to. Two pieces of old wood, to be more precise one had a rather intimidating looking neck repair and the other was once the victim of a scary conversion attempt. Both of them had almost all the original parts taken off and had been totally refinished. I was initially lured there by an advert for the one that had had its neck broken, which was very competitively priced due probably to its rather sad appearance. I asked for another guitar to compare and met the other conversion...
In the last posting, I talked about the awe that I was struck with when I walked into a Tokyo shop with rows of Les Paul sunbursts and two-tone Strats. I had thought more about this and just realised how all of this might have started. I was first introduced to vintage guitars in 1973 by columns written by Tomiaki Tommy Hidaka (1950-1986), the singer-songwriter-guitarist of a Japanese band, Garo. They were heavily influenced by the British and American rock of the late '60s and were a well-respected young band in the budding Tokyo rock scene of the time, until they had a major chart success with a pop song written by a M.O.R writer. They then became a nationwide celebrity for a little while before breaking up...
The summer of '08 is basically over. I was in a number of very nice vintage guitar shops in Tokyo on my trip earlier this summer. I always seem to find some guitars that I have a holiday romance with in Tokyo nowadays and some of them I brought home. Until recently, it was always the case that you had to pay a lot more for a vintage piece in Japan. Like it has been here in the UK, the shop prices there consisted of the US price plus a substantial dealers margin. The situation changed for some reason and now, you can find a real bargain in Tokyo. I suppose as more and more vintage guitars were imported to Japan, there was a build up of a substantial local stock in Japan and given the stagnating Japanese economy since the '90s and the general practice of lower trade-in prices there, if the dealer does not charge a big margin, you can find some guitars below the US market price let alone the UK prices.
I was messing around with my newly acquired 2003 Brazilian fingerboard Historic 1958 Reissue (R8) Les Paul my friend Koji Mori at Ishibashi Guitars in Tokyo had set this one aside for me when it came in, but, me being in the UK, it took us literally years to hook up and for me to pick it up from his shop in Tokyo. I hadnt bought a brand new guitar for some ten years previous and it was a treat. I love the playability of this new guitar as the fingerboard is dead straight and it has the right sort of tonal colour. I personally think, although it is a matter of personal opinion, that the fingerboard wood has something to do with the acoustic tone of a Gibson solidbody electric guitar. My hunch is that that is the reason why (a) a 68 Les Paul Custom with its maple top acoustically sounds very different from a Goldtop from the same year; and (b) 50s Les Paul Customs with their mahogany body still have those tight treble harmonics. Sound is something totally subjective and it may be my ears are deceiving me but that is my humble opinion on which I base my personal purchase decisions...
I have recently been collecting vintage Pignose amps. They are pretty much the only vintage amps that are actually affordable to the extent that I can have a half dozen of them in a row, compare the sound and choose the best one or two to record with. I probably should not be writing this piece just in case some collectors are reading this and decide to to stock pile on them and push the market price up. The thing is, either not many people latched on to the fact that the 70s made-in-USA Pignose is a wonderful amplifier that was used on many classic recordings (the modern made-in-Hong Kong reissue versions dont record like the old ones at all or I have no ear), or the sound of the vintage Pignose (which is a transistor amp after all) is rubbish and does not deserve to be revered. It's a matter of opinion, of course, but I certainly have recorded with them through a vintage AKG tube C12 microphone and surprised the engineer and others with the sound I got out of this little amp...