Last Chance Gas

What with tomorrow being the 20th anniversary of the tragic death of Stevie Ray Vaughan, I’ve been Facebook posting some clips and discussions of SRV and his idol, Jimi Hendrix. Picking up on this was old college friend and former bandmate Sal DeMaio, prompting this exchange:

John Malay The Stevie Ray Vaughan Strat: as unique as its owner. Rosewood body (!! (99.999% of all strats are ash) with a left-handed whammy bar. Issued as a ’62 but with a neck marked ’59 and pick-ups initialed “LF” for “Leo Fender”. It is known that in the Fifties Leo still helped out on the line manufacturing instruments, including wire wrapping pick-ups. Plus, back then you could find a strat with a wide, fat neck. All currently-made strats have skinny necks that may as well be teles.

Sal DeMaio I have never owned a strat, but I have played some beauties. I beleive the left handed trem was a nod to emulate Jimi Hendrix’s string path, but the pick-up on the SRV are typical of right handed guitars as are the tuners, and on the Hendrix models they are reversed.

John Malay I think that Hendrix played a right-handed strat slung left-handed, therefore the standard right-handed tremolo seemed to hang over the strings rather than under them. SRV, playing rightie, needed a left-handed trem to achieve the same look. However, this meant his guitar tech needed to rout out some of the body on the left side of the tremolo hole and fill in the equivalent space on the right, since 6-hole trems are asymmetrical and the bodies are routed out to reflect that.

I built a strat many years ago and avoided the entire issue by using a solid bridge rather than a tremolo. Overall I got a mixed result on the project. Nowadays, I would make different choices, (plus I am now better at soldering!) There are any number of places on the internet to get vintage or modern parts. Not so 25 years ago.

Sal DeMaio Yes he did, and the string path from the upside down trem, over the opposite slanted pickups and through the reverse lengths of the strings from the nut to the tuners have been a matter of fierce debate ever since.

John Malay Shown here:

http://jamorama.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/hendrixPA1609_468x513.jpg

…he is obviously playing a right handed strat strung for a leftie, with the heavier strings on top.

OK. In both cases the talent of the players meant that they could have achieved great tone with a cigar box and rubber bands, but having wonderful pre-CBS Fender Stratocasters was the perfect match-up of player and instrument.

As I mention, I gave a shot at building a Strat from parts about 30 years ago – with mixed results. There were a few parts manufacturers who advertised in Guitar Player Magazine. Today, thanks to the Internet, there are almost endless possibilities.

Hendrix played standard off-the-shelf Strats, available everywhere (at least in the US) and made (in America) to the exacting standards of a company still run by its founder, Leo Fender. Given Jimi’s penchant for destroying them onstage, custom models would have been a waste. Such guitars are available as vintage used models for thousands of dollars, depending on their condition and original hardware. Or, you can buy re-issues from Fender at about $1,600.

SRV found his axe, as related here, in a guitar shop (sometimes referred to in the telling as a pawn shop) and played the same one until his death. A Fender re-issue will set you back about $2,000 and there are significant differences: alder body (not rosewood), pao ferro fingerboard (not rosewood), Texas Special pickups (not ’59 standards), however you will get the left-handed tremolo, which is difficult to find otherwise if that is important to you. The neck radius and shape may or may not be the same.

Could you build a more accurate replica out of parts? The answer – based on some cursory Internet research – is a qualified “yes”. You could certainly come closer to the original than Fender does. Most Internet vendors have a large selection of neck, bodies, electronic and other hardware. Since I spend waaaay too much time browsing the Warmouth site, let’s go there.

• A Strat “Vintage” body, in rosewood with a clear finish and routed for a 6-hole right-handed tremolo (our first compromise) would cost $715. (Rosewood is expensive.)
• A Strat style neck, maple with a rosewood fingerboard would be $362. SRV’s guitar had fat fret wire on it, possibly what is called “medium jumbo” as opposed to a lot of so-called “vintage frets”. There is no difference in price. I’d go with the medium jumbos myself. Warmouth has what they call a “59 roundback” neck profile and the widest neck they offer is 1 11/16. That’s probably pretty close to what SRV had. Older Fenders all had a 7.25″ radius fingerboard.
• Gold Gotoh 6-hole tremolo: $52.
• Gold Gotoh vintage style tuners: $45.
• 8-hole vintage style pickguard: $25.
• Pickups are tricky as to which ones would most closely approximate standard 59 Strats, but I’m going to assume about $90-100 apiece, or $290. If you want the real deal go here and pay $375 for the exact SRV replicas.
• Miscellaneous electronics, pots, knobs, etc. probably will cost you around $40.

That’s about $1,500, plus you build it, you do the electrics plus you set up the neck. etc. It sounds like a fun project and one with plenty of room for compromise if it’s beyond your budget.

For me the big question mark is the neck. SRV used to say that he never played another Strat with that neck feel and that is critical to the instrument. Interestingly, although the neck on his guitar said “59″ it sounds from the description as if it were made from the earlier neck stock with the so-called “C” profile (often described as “huge”) but they did not have the rosewood fingerboard option. In ’59 rosewood fingerboards were introduced and early years were described as a “slab”, so it may be that the thick feel came from that.

Crappy cell phone pic of Michael and Linda at the start of last night’s gig. Later I joined in on bass for a while, then Vinnie Ross of the Swingin’ Johnsons took over on bass and I switched to rhythm guitar and played my homebrew D-18 with the new piezo pickup on it through my little Fender 25R. Big fun!

And, yes, Michael is playing a Tom Anderson. It’s his go-to axe. He has another TA, a strat-style solid body with 2 humbuckers.

Played mostly rhythm guitar last night. Did get the chance to play one or two songs on Alan’s top-of-the-line Hofner Beatle bass. Impressions: incredibly light, small and fragile-seeming. Wonderful neck and classic tone, but string placement way too narrow for my gorilla hands.

Oh, well. Had to settle for playing his Martin cutaway with Fishman electronics. Sweet.

Enjoyed “Mexicali” Mike Andrew and Alan “Beatle-mania” LeBoeuf last night at The Store. Alan is playing a super-rare, super-cool Hofner Beatle bass.

Surprisingly good crowd for a holiday weekend.

Acoustic guitar re-fitted with Matrix Infinity under saddle pickup. Only had to pay the difference between it and the previous one installed. The homebrew still needs a new bridge and (maybe) new tuners. The current ones may be slipping a bit.

I got the homebrew dreadnaught back on Friday. It was a mixed experience. They couldn’t get a Matrix Infinity pickup in time to get the guitar back to me for the Friday gig. This despite the fact that they are available in most music stores. (Of course, they don’t want to pay retail.) They also kept pushing back the ready time and were hard to contact.

So they installed the previous iteration of the Matrix that came with no controls. Fine. I did tone and volume from the amp itself. Doable but a pain in the ass.

No quarrel with their overall workmanship: the saddle groove needed re-routing in order for the pickup to fit, but you’d never know it. Very neatly done. Heel block drilling and fitting, very professional.

So, a dilemma. The guitar needs more work and tricky work it is: new bridge and/or new bridge placement. Plus they need to upgrade the pickup. I know they can do a good job, but it is likely to take a month of waiting for them with little or no word.

One of the good reasons to take your guitar to be worked on in Riegelsville, PA, is that you get to cross over the Riegelsville Bridge at the Delaware River. It was built in 1903 by the sons of John Roebling, who built the Brooklyn Bridge, to which it bears a resemblance (on a much smaller scale). Same method of construction and still sturdy enough for two-way car traffic.

Memorial Day, Basking Ridge, 2010. Red, white and blue skies. (Thx to Anne Sheehan for the pic.)

I spotted this all-electric Tesla in the parking lot during the bike race Wednesday night.

Vroom. Or should that be “bzzzzz”?

I took my beloved D-19 guitar to a real luthier for installation of an under-saddle pickup and preamp. I no longer have the tools or the expertise to perform surgery on my home-brew acoustic. Guitar Parlor in Riegelsville, PA, just across the Delaware from downtown metropolitan Finesburg.