In part 1, I mentioned a few players who built or tinkered with their own guitars to produce sounds unique to them, or at least make them more useful. Here are a few more guitarists who liked to mod. And who doesn’t?
Keith Richards
Keef’s famous Micawber is the result of a number of mods that the Rolling Stones veteran has done himself to a 50’s Telecaster. Soon after being give to him on his 27th birthday by Eric Clapton, Richards replaced the neck single coil with a Gibson PAF. Years later, he was experimenting with open tunings and found he didn’t need the low E string and removed it. Why not? Micawber has remained a five string ever since. Clearly a case of less is more.
George Harrison
Maybe painting a guitar isn’t quite modding but it could be considered modifying a finish. In 1965, Harrison bought a sonic blue Stratocaster and used it all over Rubber Soul. A year or so later, during the Sgt Pepper sessions, he decided it needed a new paint job, and decorated it with rainbow Day Glo paints, dubbing it Rocky. The resulting guitar fit the band’s psychedelic image of the time and made a worldwide appearance at what would become the televised of launch of All You Need is Love.
Jim Hendrix
One of the most famous photos of Jim, setting his own guitar on fire like an offering to otherworldly entities, shows the demise of a beautiful hand painted and often mythologized Stratocaster.
What happened to the Strat after its cremation on Sunday 18 June 1967, the third and final day of the Monterey International Pop Festival, is still a mystery, but the spirit of the guitar has been resurrected by Fender in the called the Jimi Hendrix Monterey Stratocaster.
Like George Harrison, Jimi simply grabbed the paints he had and let his creative spirit guide him to make something unique.
Tony Iommi
Losing the end of half your fingers on your fretting hand in a sheet metal factory might make most people reconsider a career playing guitar. Not Iommi. Before going on to invent heavy metal (arguments on a postcard please) he made his own prosthetic finger ends and got on with it. Moving to lighter strings, and using more aggressive pickups in his SG helped him play and created a new sound. He may have been the only guitarist to mod his own body AND his guitar!
Hopefully this has got you thinking about how your own guitars could be improved to suit your style, either radically to create new sounds or aesthetically to provide more inspiration.
Some of these mods can require special tools (and let’s be honest, space to make an almighty mess!) so if you need any work done on your guitars, just let me know.
IMAGE CREDITS
Harrison: Future/Kevin Scanlon. Richards: Fender.com