Well, it's not really a big stretch for players to pose or appear in music videos with a guitar, which makes you go "WTH is THAT?" It was lampooned by The Tubes for "White punks on dope" and Genesis in "Land of Confusion" where Mike Rutherford, who is the poster boy for double neck guitars, is depicted playing a quadruple-neck guitar of which all four necks are the same.
Paul Stanley of Kiss with a custom Star shaped guitar, of which he said "Sounded terrible" which is why he only used it on mimed performances, preferring his Ibanez and Hamer guitars for the real thing.
But, this time we'll be talking about those players who took an absolutely bizarre guitar and used it as their main instrument, seeing sonic possibilities instead of impracticality.
And I'll start with former Frank Zappa, Missing Persons and Duran Duran guitarist Warren Cuccurullo.
For years, I thought that he was playing the Bizarre Vox Winchester model.
Which basically is a guitar neck bolted onto a Wah pedal casing. But no, what he's actually playing is a Performance guitars made custom number, which he named the "Missing link."
This one belonged to Cuccurullo and was one of two Floyd equipped "Missing Link" models he used with Missing Persons and Duran Duran. Those guitars are every bit as unusual as Cuccurullo himself is.
Then we have Lindsey Buckingham
When Fleetwood Mac reinvented themselves with Buckingham and Stevie Nicks in the fold, they took Rick Turner on board as their guitar tech. Turner, who worked with Alembic wasted no time converting his new employers to that brand. But while John McVie took to their basses like a duck to water, Buckingham was far less enthusiastic about their guitars.
That clean "Jerry Garcia" sound of those was not to his liking. But he DID like the "Stratoblaster" pre-amp that Turner fitted to his Fenders, it made the output so powerful that it blew up his Hiwatt amps. So Turner asked Buckingham what it took to make him something to his liking and Buckingham told him that it should have the clarity of a Fender but the bottom end of a Gibson.
So Turner set out to find out what made those guitars sound the way they did and why the Alembics couldn't get that sound, in the end it came down to the very things which worked so well for a player like Jerry Garcia: the neck through body design and the layered "Hippie Sandwich" body construction.
So Turner decided to make a guitar out of two pieces of mahogany with the Stratoblaster circuitry built in there and a special design humbucker.
The Humbucker is in that sweet spot in between where the neck and middle pickup from a Fender Stratocaster would sit. It's a very strange guitar, but he never plays anything else.
Paul Stanley of Kiss with a custom Star shaped guitar, of which he said "Sounded terrible" which is why he only used it on mimed performances, preferring his Ibanez and Hamer guitars for the real thing.
But, this time we'll be talking about those players who took an absolutely bizarre guitar and used it as their main instrument, seeing sonic possibilities instead of impracticality.
And I'll start with former Frank Zappa, Missing Persons and Duran Duran guitarist Warren Cuccurullo.
For years, I thought that he was playing the Bizarre Vox Winchester model.
Which basically is a guitar neck bolted onto a Wah pedal casing. But no, what he's actually playing is a Performance guitars made custom number, which he named the "Missing link."
This one belonged to Cuccurullo and was one of two Floyd equipped "Missing Link" models he used with Missing Persons and Duran Duran. Those guitars are every bit as unusual as Cuccurullo himself is.
Then we have Lindsey Buckingham
When Fleetwood Mac reinvented themselves with Buckingham and Stevie Nicks in the fold, they took Rick Turner on board as their guitar tech. Turner, who worked with Alembic wasted no time converting his new employers to that brand. But while John McVie took to their basses like a duck to water, Buckingham was far less enthusiastic about their guitars.
That clean "Jerry Garcia" sound of those was not to his liking. But he DID like the "Stratoblaster" pre-amp that Turner fitted to his Fenders, it made the output so powerful that it blew up his Hiwatt amps. So Turner asked Buckingham what it took to make him something to his liking and Buckingham told him that it should have the clarity of a Fender but the bottom end of a Gibson.
So Turner set out to find out what made those guitars sound the way they did and why the Alembics couldn't get that sound, in the end it came down to the very things which worked so well for a player like Jerry Garcia: the neck through body design and the layered "Hippie Sandwich" body construction.
So Turner decided to make a guitar out of two pieces of mahogany with the Stratoblaster circuitry built in there and a special design humbucker.
The Humbucker is in that sweet spot in between where the neck and middle pickup from a Fender Stratocaster would sit. It's a very strange guitar, but he never plays anything else.
