“If the tuners are no good, the guitar is no good”: Billy Duffy on what’s really important for a vintage guitar
Billy Duffy isn’t one to keep his vintage guitars locked up in a box, and would rather them be functional “work tools”.
For this reason, The Cult guitarist feels the tuners fitted on a vintage model make a huge difference, and will swap them out with upgrades if needed – and he did just that on his original TV Yellow 1950s Gibson Les Paul Junior.
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Speaking to Guitar World in its new print edition, Duffy says, “I remember the first time I saw the New York Dolls on television, in 1973, on [the British TV series] The Old Grey Whistle Test. [Johnny] Thunders wasn’t playing a Junior – I think it was a Vox Teardrop – but the TV Yellow Junior became synonymous with him after that.
“Sylvain Sylvain, interestingly, was playing a single-cutaway White Falcon [the Gretsch model synonymous with Duffy],” he recalls, “so there’s a big part of my guitar journey right there on that clip.”
Further speaking on the Junior, he adds, “I actually don’t remember how I got the Junior. I was always trading up to get better guitars – around that late ’70s/early ’80s I only really ever had one guitar at a time… It was an original ’50s model. The Junior would’ve been totally stock, except the original tuners, which were rubbish. I only ever buy guitars that are players; I don’t need something to be totally authentic if it’s not functional.”
Duffy continues, “I do have a little of the approach where I treat them as work tools rather than sacred objects, though I understand the value of authenticity in the vintage market. But if the tuners are no good, the guitar is no good, so it had Grovers, which were an upgrade. This was the guitar I used to audition for Theatre of Hate.”
Billy Duffy is touring with The Cult across Europe this June. You can view the full list of scheduled shows via his website.
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
