2000 - 2005
2003 Godin Nylon Duet
2003 saw me back in my finger-style mode so when tax refund time came I went shopping for a good finger-style guitar. I had always like the concept of the Chet Atkins classical models by Gibson but the sound wasn’t right for me. Years before, I had seen a Godin on one of my trips to Minnesota but had dismissed it as a toy. The top had slotted openings for a graphic equalizer that looked like a speaker grill and I didn’t want a self-amplified guitar. Once I realized that this was a sound hole and not a built in speaker I decided to give it a listen.
This nylon stringed thin-body had a slightly narrower-than-standard neck that joined the body at the 14th fret but more importantly, it sounded right. Many amplified nylon string guitars have too much "string sound" and not enough acoustic resonance for my ear. The duet pickup system seems to alleviate this problem with a phase control that allows me to control the interaction of the pickups and a graphic equalizer that gives flexibility to the tone balance. For my ventures into Chet Atkins and Tommy Emmanuel style playing this is the perfect guitar. This guitar works and works well.
2004 Fender Nashville Deluxe Telecaster
The guitars above offer a wide-range of capabilities and will do nearly anything that I could ever imagine doing. Why then did I buy a second Telecaster, this one with three pickups? Coming from the chord solo world I had never done much bending even on guitars strung very light. I had never used that technique to any extent but one fine day I was playing around with Larry Carlton’s arrangement of Sleepwalk and decided to learn how to bend. Both my Strat’ and my older blue Tele’ have maple fingerboards and these will show wear quite readily. That was the first rationale for buying another solid body. I also found that bending my Strat’ could cause tuning problems (although that situation has been improved by bringing the number of tremolo springs up to five). I had succeeded in finding an additional rationale for buying another Tele’.
The Tex-Mex pickups on my Strat’ sound perfect and the Tele’ I was favoring also had Tex-Max pickups so the last piece was in place. I had now completely rationalized the purchase of one more guitar. Rationalization is all well and good but the overriding fact is that I wanted it and had a few spare bucks. When the big day finally came I opened the thick box and extracted both a Nashville Deluxe Tele’ and a Squire Bullet for my great nephew.
My guitar dealer and friend, Pete Wagoner, had gone to great lengths to set up the Squire and it sounded great. However, I had a standing request that when it came to new guitars for my own use, I would prefer to receive it without setup. The box with the Nashville Tele’ had not been opened and I was the first non-Fender employee to ever see it. It didn’t sound very good at all, quite disappointing to be outdone by the Squire that had cost about one fourth of this Tele’s price. I didn’t set up the newcomer until my nephew visited and was given his gift Squire. This would be good opportunity to show him how to setup a guitar and allow him to experience the difference between a buzz-prone hard-luck case and a well setup beauty that sounded fine and nearly played itself. After the setup demo, the new Tele’ was greatly improved. It was becoming a playable instrument with lots of sound variety.
The bridge-middle pickup combination sounds strong with just the right blues bite. The bridge pickup alone is a typical Tele’ sound which is to say the bite of a steel. The neck pickup is mellow and warm reminding me that Canadian jazz guitarist Ed Bickert uses a Tele’ for some of the most mellow chord work in jazz guitar. The biggest surprise for me was the center pickup. It has a strong, clear sound and is very usable. This is something that I cannot say of my Strat’. All this having been said, the new Tele still had a long ways to go if it wanted to win my heart. Finally a back-to-back comparison with my old Standard Tele brought me to a moment of truth, the new Tele sounded weak and tinny in comparison to my old Tele. Something had to be done or I would replace it with a ’52 reissue and never look back.
2004 Fender Custom Telecaster FMT HH
Being blessed with a modest collection of guitars is something that I greatly appreciate. Many of my instruments are inexpensive but competent which was the idea that Leo Fender had from the very beginning. After a while I had come to miss the appearance of woodgrain in my guitar’s finishes. Shortly after performing corrective surgery on the Nashville Tele’ I spotted a new Telecaster model. This Tele’ had binding, a thin body with contouring and best of all, a top made of Flamed Maple with a beautiful Amber finish. With two humbucking pickups the sound was as great as the appearance. I had not yet formed any attachment to the Nashville Tele’ so I did some more horse trading and ended up with a Telecaster that was positively gorgeous. While this is still an instrument that is far from expensive it does play well and sounds good. There is a push-pull switch built into the tone control which allows the humbucking pickups to be switched to single-coil configuration. While some sounds are not available on this instrument (such as the Strat “honk” used by Eric Clapton) it is overall very versatile and capable of covering a wide range of sounds. I have a feeling that this one will be a keeper.
2004 Fender 50th Anniversary American Deluxe Stratocaster
In 2004 the Strat turned 50 and Fender built four tribute models. The American Deluxe model was an Alder bodied instrument with a Maple neck and a
two-color sunburst finish. The single ply white pickguard completed the look giving the impression of a modernized ’54 Stratocaster. The pickups are
Fender’s new Samarium Cobalt Nickel Noiseless models connected to the innovative S-1 switch. This combination results in a very versatile guitar which
can go from ice-pick bright to arch-top mellow instantly. A fellow could do a lot worse than to use this for virtually anything that comes up on a gig.
A lot of folks jumped on the bandwagon to buy the 50th Anniversary Strats perhaps in hope of owning a collector’s item that would appreciate in value.
I’m not holding my breath on this one, there were a lot of 50th Anniversary Strats sold but whether they appreciate in value or not they are competent,
good-sounding and beautiful instruments well worth the cost.
2005 Gretsch G3161 Synchromatic
This is a bit of a surprise to me. After my old Streamliner way back in the ‘70s I had given up on Gretsch guitars. I did take notice of a Gretsch G400 Synchromatic some years back. It’s “cat’s eye” soundholes gave it an art deco look and this Gretsch sounded great. I never pursued that Synchromatic having no need for another archtop but those soundholes stayed in my mind over the years. I have also had a long time fascination with thin archtops such as the Gibson Byrdland. In late 2002 I had a chance to play a Gibson L-5CT, basically an acoustic L-5 with a depth of 2.25”. These thin archtops have a unique resonance and can be surprisingly loud considering their depth. Strangely, one day these two fascinations met in an unexpected place. I had noticed that Gretsch had built a number of inexpensive thin archtop models over the years using the cat’s eye soundhole design. I always found these attractive but had never played one. Remember, Gretsch guitars and I had some “history”.
One day I saw a beautiful thin-body archtop Gretsch with a transparent orange finish, two Gretsch humbuckers and last (but not least) two beautifully bound cat’s eye soundholes. I had to try it out and I was quite surprised by what I heard. Played electrically on the neck pickup it sounded like a jazz guitar, an expensive jazz guitar. The bridge pickup WAs bright and clear with a gutsy sound for country or surf-rock music. Playing on both pickups simultaneously results in a great blues tone or a mellow-rock sound. Played acoustically this little gem was louder than many full-depth archtops. The sound is strong and pure too. To my tastes the acoustic archtop is as good as it gets. The jangle is somewhat muted compared to a flat-top but it is still present. In addition, the archtop has a sound characteristic that flat-tops usually do not. The sound has, for lack of a better word, a “body” that can drive a band. Acoustic archtop guitars were used for rhythm in the big bands, punching through in a band that can include dozens of horns. It’s a unique sound that is too rarely heard in today’s music.
2005 Gretsch 6120N
Apparently this was a leftover from 2001 that had hung unsold for nearly five years. This is a relatively obscure model at best. This guitar is a bright orange 6120 Nashville model with 1.7” rims (instead of 2.75”) and a solid balsa-wood block in the center. The cutaway is a sharp “Florentine” style instead of the “Venetian” cutaway found on most Gretsches. Two FilterTron humbucking pickups and a shiny gold Bigsby round out the package. When I first saw this guitar I dismissed it as an ES 335 in Gretsch trim. Once I played it I realized that it has quite a different character than the ES 335. The sound is definitely Gretsch or as some would say; “That Great Gretsch Sound”. Chet Atkins’ singing, single-note sound fairly flows from this guitar and it does a great job on his finger-style sound too. Setzer’s sound is right there on tap as well. Mine is setup lighter than my other Gretsch electric and comes in handy for just about anything I want to play. Stinging, ice-pick Tele tones and rock-hard hard rock are not really its strengths but just about any other kind of music sounds great on this very versatile guitar. One other thing to point out is the role of the Bigsby. For all of their strengths and weaknesses there is nothing quite like a Bigsby Vibrato Tailpiece. It is smooth, effortless and controllable, very controllable. In a matter of days after purchasing this guitar I was hooked on the Bigsby and I don’t think that there is any turning back now.
