FTW, 4.7.2021

 Playing the new guitar brings remembrances of guitars past.

I broke the headstock off my original Silvertone 1478 before I really knew how to play, but the feel of it is familiar, and better than I remember. Running it through my no-name fuzz (designed to emulate a dimed Fuzz Face) and Vox wah gave me my Stoogeaphilia sound, but with more definition. (The Strat through the Twin with fuzz and wah sometimes became an uncontrollable ball of noise with no sweep, no matter how I chained the F/X. Which might also have been the result of dirty stage power.) 

It's different playing this setup now that I can actually play. When I first used pedals back in '72, they were controlling me more than me them. I actually played differently when I turned them on. My original blue silicon Fuzz Face made a noise like Ron Asheton's on the first Stooges album, and with the heavy strings the guitar came with, I could only bend a half step, which made my playing at the time even more Ron-like. The Fuzz Face used to pick up radio signals from Canada (curiously in Spanish) that I thought at the time sounded "just like Hendrix at Isle of Wight!"

The Univox wah my first band gave me didn't have the ability to lock it in a position, so I wound up stuffing a handkerchief under the pedal to keep it in the somewhat overdriven midrange position that I liked (trying to imitate Page on the first Zeppelin album). Maybe that's where my preference for midrange-heavy tones came from. Or it might have been the '68 SG I bought to replace the broken Silvertone -- I'd seen Townshend and Santana in the Woodstock movie, and thought SGs had the best "horns" -- which had a bum bridge pickup. (I was interested to read an interview with Steve Hunter of Mitch Ryder/Lou Reed/Alice Cooper fame, who said he used to use .008s and favored the neck pickup for solos, which I'd never have guessed.)

Switching to the .013-.056s for the Trout Mask Replica project brought back memories of both the old 1478 and the better '66 SG I bought from Dan Walls in '78 and strung with the heavy set to get my chops back before I moved from Austin to Aspen to make a band, late in the fall of '79. I had the best tone of my life running that guitar straight through a tweed, reverb-less Deluxe I'd bought from Tim Flynn. I couldn't really bend strings on it, but I didn't need to, because there was another guitarist and I played rhythm unless we were doing the "My Generation" medley from Live at Leeds. When my first marriage collapsed in '93, I sold that guitar for what I'd paid for it in '78. Dumbass. But my self-esteem at that point was such that I wouldn't have felt right turning it for a bunch of coin.

I stopped playing when I got back from Korea in '83 because my first wife said it bothered her when I played an unplugged electric guitar on the other side of the house with all the doors closed. My wife now is more tolerant of my shit, but I still try not to bother her by playing loud or doing stuff like figuring out Beefheart tunes where I'm listening repetitively to the same snippet while she's in the house. While she was at the grocery store yesterday, I plugged the 1478 into the aforementioned pedals and dicked around on a couple of Yardbirds songs. When I was a terrible tyro, Jeff Beck's solos on those records were like perfect little miniatures even I could learn to imitate. 

The record of "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago" I particularly loved. It was the only studio record they made when Beck and Page were both playing guitar, and has the sickest break of all time. I jammed it with Darrin Kobetich and Mark Hyde a couple of years ago, and I think Darrin was going to play it with his surf band. My online buddy Nick Didkovsky from Doctor Nerve/Eris 136199/CHORD reposted this video and said nice things about the horrible noises I'm making. I'm supposed to see Richard Hurley later in the week, and his wife suggested I bring over a guitar and jam, so maybe we'll make some more.