“Congratulations, you’ve passed your
driving test” the examiner told me. ‘Will you be buying a car?”
“No, I’m going to buy a guitar”
I wonder how many guitars have been funded
by student loans and grants? I went to university - on a music technology course – thinking it
would only be a matter of time before I met some illuminating people and
started a band. Without realizing the implications I got my student grant (yep,
you could still get them when I started uni) and a student loan and looked for
what I could spend the money on. I actually wanted a Gibson Les Paul Custom
Florentine, but when I found out I would only get the money in installments,
(therefore I would not have the £2000 in one sitting) I picked up on a advert
at university that another student had posted. I kept up the correspondence for
two months and eventually went to collect the guitar in December.
I hadn’t realized the guitar was a Deluxe
model, meaning that it had mini-humbuckers instead of full size ones, but I
wasn’t particularly worried about that when I got it home. It looked cool,
sounded great and that’s all that mattered. The guitar was slightly beat-up
being 18 years old at that point, and although a Gold top, had a sunburst back
and neck. The neck was very well worn and felt great.
Owning and playing this guitar really felt
like coming home. When I began to play it I remember telling myself that there
could be no more excuses for not playing well now I had a ‘Real Deal’ guitar.
It was the little things that mattered, like how the volume and tone knobs
actually seemed to do something when I played, and the tone… I could really
tell this had great tone.
At the time I bought this guitar I’d been
getting more and more into actual lead guitar as opposed to what I’d been
copying from Britpop and U2, especially going from picking to bluesy type riffs
and licks. The Les Paul Deluxe really pushed me further in that direction.
As I said in Part 3, it wasn’t long until I
was playing this guitar all the time and the Riviera stayed in it’s case. I
sold the Riviera, and until I bought my Rickenbacker 330 six years later, the
Les Paul was my only six-string electric.
At long last, I was beginning to play with
some other musicians. After the false start with the hair rock band in late
’99, in mid 2000 I answered an advert in Total Guitar for a band looking for a
lead guitarist in Stoke. I met up with Wayne (Guitar) and Andy (bass) and
played with them for about six months. Along with Jarv (Drummer) and Jackie
(Singer) we played various classic rock tracks and some Alanis Morrisette.
Although I’d joined as lead guitarist, it was pretty clear that Wayne was the
better out of the two of us, so I stuck mainly to Rhythm, although we would
occasionally just jam out, Especially a variation on Led Zeppelins ‘Girl With
The Long Black Wavy Hair’. I still had my Marshall Stack at this point and it’s
true what they say about pairing up a Les Paul and a Marshall – it’s a heavenly
sound!
I think because of the impetuousness of
youth (I was 20 at the time) I was getting bored of the band and wanted to do
something on my own, especially doing original material instead of covers. Paul
was a friend of mine from a part time job I used to have and we’d been talking
a lot a bout wiring together, him as the singer and me as the guitarist. I left
the band for that reason, and then Paul and I did nothing at all! That summer I
bought a BOSS BR-8 Zip Disc recorder thinking that it would be the beginning of
a creative phase. After maybe 2 months of fruitless noodling I got extremely
frustrated and decided to quit music altogether! I sold the 8 Track, The Epi
Bass I’d bought at that point, The Marshall stack through the classifieds at university.
I even put the Les Paul for sale too, but fortunately no-one was interested at
the price I put it at (I guess it was a little too expensive for most
students).
My musical hiatus didn’t last too long, and
in early 2001 I began the three-and-a-half year odyssey that was Penguin Steak.
Initially we were just a jam band having fun, with my friend James on Bass and
Andy on drums. We’d play 12 bar blues improvisations, just learning our
instruments, before trying covers later. I used the Gibson all through this
period and I think then more than ever it really began to feel like it was part
of me. Great how that happens when you’re rehearsing twice a week. Eventually
we gained Gav and then lost James and Andy, before finally picking up Mart in
late 2002 and starting a year of recording and writing at his house. All this
time I used the Les Paul, and right through 2004 when we became a rehearsing
band again before we finally split up in November of that year.
When I got my Rickenbacker 330, the Les
Paul took a back seat although very recently I have been using it again, as I
have a revival in my attitude to the guitar in general. Although it’s seen less
use in the last 7 years or so I do love it very much. I’d have a hard time
deciding which one I like more though, the Rickenbacker is possibly my slight
favourite but I’d keep this if I had to sell one because it’s a very unique
guitar and has been with me so long.
By early 2005 it was clear the Les Paul
needed a re-fret. They were quite worn when I bought it, but by now some of
them were just flat and it was getting difficult to play. I took it to the
guitar doctor who had the guitar for 2 months while it was re-fretted. I was so
glad to get it back! When I got it back, the guitar doctor told me that the guitar
had originally been a sunburst (which explained the neck), but it had at some
point been professionally refinished as a gold-top.
A few years later in 2009 I sanded off the
Goldtop (it was quite chipped) and it currently is a natural blonde with a polished
top (but not lacquered). For a few years I’ve been thinking about properly
refinishing it, either with a clear lacquer or doing a faithful sunburst
finish. I’m pretty handy with an airbrush, so I wouldn’t feel too worried about
it. Only thing that prevents me is that I don’t think I want to be without the
instrument for several weeks or even months while I do the work! While I do the
work it would be a good opportunity to do some other things, like replace the
bridge and the tuners which aren’t really keeping it in tune any more.
2022 Update
After an abortive attempt to refinish this guitar myself, I made the decision to get a professional to do it and at the same time to change the pickups to P90s. I wasn't especially a fan of the mini-humbuckers and the P90s were left from a different project. I went back to the original Goldtop finish, because even though it had been a Sunburst when it left the factory it had always been a Goldtop to me.
It had been in pieces for a few years when it went off to get the work done, and I got it back in April 2019. I didn't really use it a great deal until lockdown in 2020. With little else to do with my time, I spent three months recording an EP (with the Jag and Riviera), and using the Les Paul for two hours a day to work through Hal Leonards Jazzin' The Blues book - an excellent tome. It went out of rotation during most of 2022 but is currently back in service as I'm doing some Truefire lessons in blues-rock, and this seems the best of my three guitars to do it with, it's also the nicest to play, and is a match made in heaven with the Tiny Terror (can't get it to sound good with the Fender Deluxe Reverb though).
A fantastic guitar and an old friend - sound-wise I may slightly prefer the Riviera, but sentimentality means this is probably the guitar I'd save from the proverbial burning studio.
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