“Don’t buy it for any other reason”: The only thing to consider when buying a guitar, according to session legend Jeff “Skunk” Baxter
Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, the session ace known for his work with Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers, thinks players are looking at the wrong things when it comes to buying a guitar.
His advice? Forget the name on the headstock, forget the price tag, and just play the damn thing until you find one that “feels good to you”.
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While recently poking around a Guitar Center store, Baxter came across a $140 Squier Telecaster fitted with a Jazzmaster pickup and instantly loved how it felt. Curious, he asked to compare it to a genuine 1958 Tele hanging on the wall – a guitar priced “about a bazillion dollars” more.
“I spent about an hour setting up the Squier,” he says in the new issue of Guitarist.
“They had a guitar repair guy there and I asked if I could use his tools and set up the guitar myself. Very quickly, I compared the two, and the $140 Squier Telecaster, to me, sounded better, so I bought it.”
“It’s a great guitar,” he says.
For Baxter, the logic is simple: a guitar is only worth buying if it speaks to you. Everything else, like what it says on the headstock, is secondary.
“The first thing I would say for sure is that, if you can, ignore everything and just play it. And if it plays great, then it is great,” he explains. “Whether it’s a Squier as opposed to, like, an expensive Fender special, custom – whatever.”
“This is not to say that you shouldn’t buy quality instruments, that’s not the point. The point is that whatever guitar feels good to you is the right guitar. Don’t buy it for any other reason.”
Baxter is not alone in this. Virtuoso Joe Satriani, too, believes that players should “connect with the guitar” rather than chase after vintage instruments for the sake of it. Speaking to D’Addario, Satch admitted to being “disillusioned” with the “most valuable, rare guitars” after his youth working in a guitar shop.
“There’s nothing special about it,” he said. “The musician has to connect with the guitar for it to become special.”
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
