“It’s basically a Gibson Les Paul jammed into a Fender Telecaster”: This is one of Joe Bonamassa’s favourite vintage guitars – and why hybrids can be “the best”
Joe Bonamassa is one of the most prolific collectors of vintage guitars. But he doesn’t possess the purism you might expect from a vintage collector. In fact, one of his favourite guitars is a heavily modified 1968 Fender Telecaster loaded with Gibson PAF humbuckers…
Blues ace and owner of one of the world’s greatest collections of vintage instruments – housed at Nerdville East and West in Nashville and LA, respectively – Joe Bonamassa has hundreds of guitars. But this guitar remains one of his favourites, and it’s precisely because it’s a hybrid, he explains in a new interview with Guitar Center.
“These are PAF humbucking pickups from Gibson,” he says. “I bought this guitar from a guy in Daytona Beach, Florida about 15 years ago. It wasn’t a lot of money. And I plugged it in and it was magic. Sometimes a hybrid can turn out to be the best.”
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The Tele, he explains, is fitted with 500k potentiometers – which let less high frequency content bleed resulting in a brighter tone.
“It’s basically a Gibson Les Paul jammed into a Fender Telecaster,” says Bonamassa. ‘But the difference is you have a maple neck and an ash body. And they sound great. And that’s the beauty of a Fender Telecaster: you can pretty much do anything to it.
“Now, do I suggest going out there and buying a very expensive vintage Telecaster, taking a pin router to it and jamming a whole bunch of pickups in there? No. If they’re already modified, then that’s the beauty of it. And you can save yourself some money and have literally just a utility plank that can play anything.”
Of course, one of JoBo’s favourite guitars has obviously seen its share of stage use…
“I’ve used this guitar for jazz fusion gigs, I’ve used it for rock gigs. I’ve used it for everything, because it has so much flexibility.”
He might be a vintage guitar collector, but his love of hybrid guitars isn’t the first opinion that might poke at the gear purists. Increasingly so lately, he’s been touting his love of digital amp modellers.
Recently admitting that he “wanted to hate” amp modellers, he explained: “I was wrong about the fact that no modeller will replace a tube version, I think they’re gonna get there and surpass.”
The post “It’s basically a Gibson Les Paul jammed into a Fender Telecaster”: This is one of Joe Bonamassa’s favourite vintage guitars – and why hybrids can be “the best” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
