3 Reasons You Need A Tinkering Guitar
Originally posted May 8, 2018 on the S&R blog.
Look at your guitar collection. Chances are if you are like most guitar players, you own more than one guitar. And since you have more than likely have more than one guitar, you probably have your favorite, your baby, your precious, Excalibur, your main enchilada (you get the point). These are the instruments you would be devastated if something happened to it. Taking them to shows drive you crazy. You know the one we are talking about.
I’m betting that you would never to try new gizmos and gadgets on this guitar. The idea of changing the brand/gauge of strings let alone the pickups give you nightmares – a bit of an exaggeration, but only slightly. So what’s a budding guitar player to do when you hear about the latest onboard preamp by Fishman or wanting to install a b-bender into your telecaster but don’t want to alter your main guitar?! You need a tinkering guitar.
A tinkering guitar is an instrument with the sole purpose of trying out new guitar gadgets. I view a tinkering guitar like Frankenstein – or even better – Eddie Van Halen’s Frankenstrat – the original tinkering guitar. Sometimes you need to sound like many different guitars but only have enough resources for one instrument like Brent Mason. Or you play a variety of different styles of music that require unique sounds for each and you want one instrument to rule them all like Steve Morse.
I am a full believer that new inspiration lies within new gear.
Before I go any further, let me say you do not need new gear to gain new inspiration but sometimes a new piece of gear is exactly what you need to drive you to pick up the instrument more and explore around the neck. Also keep in mind, new gear doesn’t necessarily mean a new instrument.
I purchased myself an Epiphone Les Paul (yes new guitar) a few years ago to use as my slide guitar. But since then, I have used this guitar to also try new things, such as the String Butler (yay new gear), new pickups and sanding down the back of my guitar neck. I certainly play slide guitar a whole lot more now and the instrument stays in tune a lot better.
Side note: if you want to practice something in an alternative tuning than what you normally play in, have a separate guitar in that tuning so that you aren’t required to retune the guitar every time you want to practice slide or alternative tunings.
The great thing about having a separate guitar to tinker around with is the new inspiration. Since purchasing my Les Paul, I have written about 5 songs on it using the alternative tunings it is set to when I pick it up. I wrote a song called Lighthouse one day when I picked it up. Previously, I had tuned it to open C for slide on another tune I wrote and I began playing around with this different tuning without the slide. The results were impressive – it might not be my best work but it was something new and fresh.
Your tinkering guitar doesn’t need to be in an alternative tuning to get the same results. Say your tinkering guitar has a tremolo arm on it while your main guitar doesn’t – that can certainly lead to inspiration. The way different guitars play also can lead to new musical ideas. Different neck shapes play differently and subtly change the way the player plays. The pickups do as well. The subtle differences can really compound on a player’s playing.
Whatever you play, here are 3 reasons why you need your own tinkering guitar.
1. CULMINATION OF ALL YOUR FAVORITE GEAR LIKE EDDIE VAN HALEN
Everybody has their favorite gear – whether its pickups, locking tuners, tremolo arms (a Telecaster with a Floyd Rose?!) or on board pre-amps. But many guitars don’t come stock with all of your favorite features – I would argue that no guitar has all the features you want. I certainly haven’t found the perfect guitar… yet.
Eddie Van Halen had this same problem. He didn’t think the guitars available were any good – this was during the 70s instrument quality decline. So he decided to build a guitar that was on par with his specs. He also wanted to use the body, neck and tremolo arm of a strat and the humbucking sound of a Les Paul. At the time, no instrument provided both. So he built his own, but combining his favorite pieces from a variety of different gear. Take his lead with your tinkering guitar. Now I am just waiting to find an affordable PRS Hollowbody II so I can add a piezo pickup and split coil switches…
2. TINKERING GUITARS CAN BE A SWISS ARMY KNIFE LIKE BRENT MASON
Brent Mason was working as a session player in Nashville and needed more options in the studio. Country music is known for its snappy telecaster chicken picking, but the music of Nashville has the sounds of Les Pauls, strats and 335s all over their records. At the time, Brent had only one guitar so instead of purchasing a new one – they were expensive and he was still early in his career – he decided to mod his telecaster.
He added a mini humbucker in the neck to sound like a Les Paul and a strat middle pickup for a Stratocaster sound. Now equipped with three pickups, an extra knob for tone, and the sounds of a strat, Les Paul and telecaster all in one guitar, he was unstoppable in the studio.
3. ALLOWS YOU TO PLAY A VARIETY OF DIFFERENT STYLES OF MUSIC LIKE STEVE MORSE
Steve Morse designed his guitar for the variety of different music he plays night after night. Morse has played every genre imaginable from a country-prog-metal (odd combination) rock sound with his group, the Dixie Dregs (great band) to the hard rocking sounds of Deep Purple and the art rock sonic waves of Kansas. To accommodate the large variety of music, Steve decided to make a guitar that could keep up with the vast majority of styles he had to play.
To keep up with all the sonic palette, his guitar include 4 pickups that give him 11 pickup combinations with the 3-way switch and 2 toggles switches. Like Brent Mason and Eddie, his guitar came out of necessity but the musical exploration lead to innovation.
WHAT SHOULD I LOOK FOR IN A TINKERING GUITAR?
I’m glad you asked. Here are the features you should look for when purchasing a tinkering guitar.
Qualities of a tinkering guitar:
Solid body guitar
Electric
bolt on neck
Easy accessible electronics
Doesn’t hold significant personal value – i.e. you won’t get upset if it doesn’t look pristine.
FINAL THOUGHTS
No two guitars are identical – how could they, each piece of wood is unique – and no two guitars play the same too. Pick up a tele and play a lick. Now play that same kick on an Ibanez JEM. The noise coming out of the amp will sound completely different – but you probably already knew that.
A fat neck will make you play slower and more melodic than say playing a thin shred neck, a hot-wound pickup will make you play different than playing through a set of vintage pickups, as will a Floyd rose compared to playing a guitar with a stop tail bridge. I could go on but I think you get the gist.
The world of aftermarket parts is a marvelous and ever expanding universe that us guitar players get to indulge in. And while I have an (almost) perfect guitar that I would never change anything, Though, I still would like to try out new pieces of equipment – looking at you b-bender – as I’m sure there are things you want to try as well. Before you buy your next high end guitar, try picking up a diamond in the rough that you can run experiments on and try those new pickups, add a preamp, change the tunings and raise up your action. Heck you might even fall in love with those awful robot tuners after all.
Do you have a tinkering guitar story? A special unique guitar that lead to a cool riff or blistering solo? Let us know in the comments below.
Until next time, let the music play!