Inside the heavily modded – and blowtorched – Fender/Warmoth hybrid Joe Perry calls his “desert island guitar”
Every guitarist has that one guitar they can’t live without, and for Joe Perry, it’s the “Burned Strat”. From small club gigs to MTV stages, the Fender/Warmoth hybrid has been a constant in Perry’s musical journey – an instrument so personal he calls it his “desert island guitar,” and one he can “pretty much do anything” on.
Speaking to Guitar World, Perry reflects on the axe’s origins, describing it as a “work in progress” even after decades of tweaks and shows.
“The inspiration for putting it together was when I left the band, I put most of my Aerosmith guitars aside and basically put this guitar together out of Warmoth parts,” Perry explains. “I was going back to playing clubs and theaters, just cruising the country in a van with a band and playing. In a way, that guitar fit in with my philosophy of leaving the Aerosmith thing to the side and playing this one guitar that I’d put together.”
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“You can tell it was played a lot because I did a lot of shows back then, and there’s just a sound and a feel to it,” he adds. “It had a left-handed neck and body, and it was my go-to guitar for those three years. When it was time to start going back on the road with Aerosmith, I thought, ‘Well, I’ll pull that one out’ because it symbolised so much of me; it had a sound and felt really comfortable.”
By the early 2000s, Perry and his tech built the current Burned Strat to preserve the original.
“I didn’t want to take a chance on the original guitar being lost, so somewhere around 2001, me and my tech put another one together with the same philosophy – just bits and pieces, you know?”
As for what makes the Burned Strat so unique, Perry explains, “It’s the same guitar as far as the Fender body and Warmoth neck. It’s kind of a relic; I’ve changed the pickups, the vibrato bar and the bridge. I carved off more of the body to make it comfortable, and I even put it in the freezer overnight and then took a blowtorch to it so the finish would crackle, which gave it a jump-start to the way it would look over the years.”
He’s also upgraded the tremolo with a Vega-Trem bridge and even used a Dremel on it – “just to make it a little more of this or that,” says the guitarist. “So I can divebomb on it and use it as another musical tool – but I also can get the classic vibrato sound.”
Recent pickup swaps to a pair of Seymour Duncan P-Rails have expanded the guitar’s tonal palette as well.
“Each one has a P90 and a Strat-style pickup in it; those two sit in a humbucker slot. We went from three pickups to two, but with those pickups, there are really four positions, and you can switch them with the microswitches we added. I can have the pickups separate or together, and the toggle lets me pick which one I want and when. I can pretty much do anything on that guitar.”
Perry recently put the Burned Strat through its paces at the MTV Video Music Awards with Steven Tyler and Yungblud, as well as on Aerosmith’s latest collab EP, One More Time.
“Everything you hear I did with that guitar and just a few foot pedals,” he says, noting that its hybrid string setup and fat frets let him bend notes comfortably – even with arthritis starting to kick in.
“At this point, it is and will continue to be my ‘desert island guitar,’ but you never know,” Perry laughs.
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
