Crossing Over... Acoustic to Electric

by Angus Thorburn

You know it's funny how the human mind works. This human mind, anyway!

Ten years ago an electric guitar to me meant either a Gibson Les Paul or a Fender Stratocaster. I didn't know there was much in between, and I didn't really know why they sounded different from each other. In fact, sometimes when I talked about them (which was rarely...) I would get the Stratocaster/Telecaster names mixed up. But it didn't matter, because yes... I was an acoustic guitar snob!

Last month, I wrote an article about my experiences in playing and collecting guitars over the years - mostly acoustic guitars, and how getting into a band put me on a steep learning curve about amps and all things electric. I don't want to pretend I'm an authority now on that subject... I'm not nearly! But some people asked me to reflect a little more on my experiences "Crossing Over" to the noisy world of playing in a covers band, from that other, more peaceful world of acoustic finger style guitar. So, boys and girls and those in between, this is my story.

When I first started playing amplified music, I had a magnetic pickup that clipped into the sound hole of my 1973 Maton FG 100. It had a tone and volume knob that sat outside the sound hole on a swinging arm, and apart from sounding just awful, it had a tendency to slide about on the sound board, and on one occasion actually fell into the sound hole mid-song! As this was in the 70's, and in a coffee club type gig, it didn't really matter - that was sort of the do it yourself vibe of the place!

 

I... always retreated to my acoustics when I wanted to play serious music.

But it reinforced my suspicion of electrics! I mentioned in my earlier article that my first solid body electrics were a copy Les Paul Black Beauty, and a Maton solid body something or other in about 1975. I never got into it, and always retreated to my acoustics when I wanted to play serious music.

When I got back into the cover band thing about ten years ago, the lead singer and good friend lent me his 72 Fender Thinline - the real deal, semi-hollow body in natural finish with the twin humbuckers. This was obviously a cut above the Asian copy electrics I had been playing years before. It was much lighter, being a semi hollow body - and was shortly even for sale!

But I wasn't really looking to buy an electric guitar again, so it passed me by, and sold for a few hundred dollars! Wow, there went by an opportunity - they now sell for over $5,000, if you can find them on eBay!

But then another good friend was getting out of playing jazz, and wanted to sell his Ibanez GB 10 George Benson hollow body... a Gibson ES 175 in shape. This was in the late eighties, pre children and school fees - and it was a bit like an acoustic guitar in feel and sound, so I paid him about $300, and became the owner of an electric guitar again!

It was a beautiful sunburst colour, with gold appointments, but gigging about in a covers band with such a fragile and feed back prone instrument gave me a wandering eye. Yes, it felt disloyal to be flirting with other people's electric guitars - furtively glancing at them, handling them, and making small talk with their owners. But I was learning a lot of stuff. I was starting to get familiar with the jargon.

 

...It felt disloyal to be flirting with other people's electric guitars - furtively glancing at them, handling them, and making small talk with their owners.

A friend in the band let me "adopt" his Rickenbacker 360 12 string, a different sounding guitar from any other electric 12 string, as it reversed the usual stringing pattern by putting the high octave string second, after the lower octave string in the E, A, D and G pairs. You therefore sounded the lower string first in the down stroke. This might not mean much on paper, but it gave The Byrds and Beatles their distinctive sound.

The Ricki was a wonderful guitar for so many cover songs (I loved doing Rod Stewart's "Maggie May" on it), but it always took me longer to tune up between sets - and, as it had once been owned by Pete Townsend (it had been smashed up and rebuilt after an early Who tour), it was too valuable for me to take about on gigs as a borrowed guitar. So - what good work horse guitar do you turn to that's unbreakable, reliable, good to look at, and works so well in 70's covers? A Fender '92 US Standard Telecaster, in Candy Apple red from Guitar Crazy in Coogee.

I was very close to buying a second hand reissue '52 butterscotch US Tele from a music store in Manly that I'd taken home on trial, (asking $1,600), but my then 5 year old son talked me out of it, by telling me it looked too old and plain, and I shouldn't be spending so much money on myself!  (I don't consult him so much these days on guitar purchases.)

Anyway, there I was... the guitar was great! But what about my amp? I had been playing through a solid state Peavey, and it had always sounded a bit brittle and one dimensional. Our lead guitarist was playing through a Fender Blues De Ville at the time, and I loved the tweed look, so I decided to put my toe in the water and buy a 30 watt tube Laney, a fashionably retro looking amp (a little like the Vox AC 30). This was great (and I still have it). It was light and small... but whilst ok for most of our gigs, when we played in larger halls, it struggled a bit.

I then found on eBay exactly what I was after - a Fender Blues De Ville, in the tweed finish. Whilst it's heavy (the major drawback of all tube amps) it has been much improved by a set of castors I've screwed onto the base - though one stage we played on with a down hill slope nearly saw it roll off into the audience! I've always tried to elevate my amp, so it's roughly pointing at my ear level (particularly in rehearsals, when they’re unmiked) – it's amazing what you miss if your knees are getting all the noise.

 

It's amazing what you miss if your knees are getting all the noise....

So I was becoming more and more interested in electrics. I stumbled upon the history of the Fender Jaguar somewhere along the line - this was the then top of the line guitar that Fender brought in around 1962, to try to overcome some shortcomings in the earlier Jazzmaster. Fender had been trying in the late fifties to capture (unsuccessfully) some of the Gibson jazz market in the days when Gibson hollow bodies ruled that style of music. The Jazzmaster never quite caught on, and neither did the Jaguar (it got a bit of a revival later in the eighties with Nirvana, Elvis Costello, etc. but remained a bit of a white elephant). I was lucky enough to get a good deal on a US '62 Re Issue Jag, and that's my current guitar of choice.

Whilst the Jag is an acquired taste - it's a bit weird looking, has a lot of gizmos on the face of it, and not as much sustain as the traditional rock guitar, it's got a sort of mellow woody sound (to attract the jazz guys), as well as a really thin sound (that attracted the surf music guys back in the sixties) that I find reminds me a little of the range of sounds of an acoustic guitar (and provides an interesting sound contrast to the Les Paul Standard of our lead guitarist). It also has a shorter scale neck that makes it easier for a non-rock guitar player to navigate.

 

I get complaints from the family about the noise....

Anyway, that's where things currently stand, more or less. My acoustics have taken (temporarily) a back seat, while I work at becoming comfortable with not just the different playing required of an electric guitar, but also the sounds from amp and effects gear. I get complaints from the family about the noise ("...and you used to play such pretty music..."), strain of the bicep and compression of the L5 vertebrae lifting the amp into the boot of the car, tangled up passing animals at home with cables and leads - but at least I can't remember when I last mixed up the names of the Telecaster and Stratocaster... and I talk about them a lot more these days, too.

Note: The Fender Discussion Page is a privately managed and ACTIVE website where you can find out lots of things about lots of things about guitars.... not just Fenders.  Check it out! http://www.fenderforum.com/

The Search of the Hungry Guitarist

Angus Thorburn is a guitar player and collector who lives and works on the North Shore of Sydney. The Metro Gnome invited Angus to share a little bit with you about how his affection for the guitar was borne. The result is a unique look into the Sydney music scene of the 1970s and a glimpse into some great Australian guitar makers. 

I'm a guitar tragic from way back… and I mean the days when the hottest music shops in town were Nicholsons and Palings in George Street, Sydney and later Harry Landis Music in Park Street, Sydney.
I discovered guitars in my mid teens about 1969, when my sister decided to take lessons on a nylon string guitar (a Montez if I remember it right) and, as so often happens, the guitar became a piece of discarded furniture after a few months, so I took it over.

Those were the days when acoustic guitars ruled the airwaves. Peter, Paul and Mary, Simon and Garfunkel, Bob Dylan, Donovan and The Seekers. The first song I taught myself was "Love is All Around"… the original Troggs version.

Then two important things happened. A guy at school two years above me turned up one day with an Aria 12 string guitar – wow, I remember the sheer volume it gave off, and the sound of individual strings ringing, compared to my meekly strummed nylon strings! That guy was so cool (and he played in the school football team) that I thought I have to get serious.

And then along came a band called Crosby, Stills and Nash. I saw them perform live on the big screen in the movie “Woodstock.” David Crosby played a Martin 12 string, and of course Steven Stills played a Martin DH 28… I think. Did acoustic music ever get any better than that?

So I started saving. I’d seen a Salvation Army retail shop on the corner of Liverpool and Elizabeth Streets, Sydney that sold well known brands of acoustic guitars with a cheaper price tag than the music stores (there’s still a Salvos there now, but it doesn’t sell musical instruments). Takemine were just becoming known as the guitar of choice for some up and coming players. John Denver was playing a twelve string version. Ovation, also, were seen around the neck of some TV stars – Glenn Campbell had his own TV show in those days, and he played only Ovation. Martin guitars were not available to my knowledge, and even if they were, they probably would have been out of my price league.

(Much later, in ’92 , with the help of Steve Jackson, of Jacksons Rare Guitars, I was able to buy a Martin 00016 – a great fingerstyle guitar that he put me onto, which I still play a lot. When I die, I’ve asked that my ashes get spread over that acoustic guitar room at Jacksons….)

But the Salvos store also had the widest selection I’d ever seen of our own Maton guitars. The best thing was they were affordable – I bought an FG 100 dreadnought 6 string, all solid Queensland maple body, and spruce sound board. It cost $305 in 1972 with a hard shell case, and was their top of the line model. I still have it, and of course with the loosening up of the timbers over the years, it’s as loud and as mellow as it gets. Great for country and western type stuff, though I don’t play that style much these days.

I started getting into the live acoustic music scene. I took girlfriends to Pac Folk, which used to be in the basement of the YMCA in Goulburn Street, Sydney. I followed Trevor Knight and Doug Ashdown around. I tried to sit as close to the front as possible, to see what chord shapes they were using. “Winter in America’’ was great on guitar, but it needed a twelve string sound.

Somebody lent me a Bruce Cockburn LP, and that steered me into the thumb style playing, with the droning bottom E string. Another player opened up a new window by firstly showing me dropped D tuning, and then for those David Crosby songs, double dropped D tuning. This made the Steven Stills song “4 and 20” come alive! (Much later I discovered DADGAD and other variations on that Celtic tuning).

I borrowed a Leo Kottke album, and that made me realize my suspicions… I needed a twelve string guitar! The best I could then afford was a Yamaha 12 string, so I now had 2 guitars. But I was single and living at home, and my university legal studies gave me plenty of time for music.

We used to get quite a lot of acoustic bands at university. The best I recall was Mississippi, a three piece band playing all original stuff, with a great first album, simply called Mississippi. They later went on to change their name, and become a little more famous as “The Little River Band.”

I got into a band, as all uni guys who played guitar did in those days. This was about 1973, and I then needed an electric guitar. So I bought a Maton electric, followed by a copy Les Paul Black Beauty (both long gone now). We played some great gigs, including an opening act for a well known Sydney band. But electric guitars were not quite my thing, as I’d been brought up on finger style playing, and had no speed with a flat pick.

Next to grab my attention were the finger style blues players, and this took me into Dobro territory! I mean that big round metal resonator on the front of a wooden body guitar was irresistible to me! I bought a Dobro Hula Blues short scale, the loudest unamplified guitar known to man. I then discovered Greg Beaton in Newcastle, who makes these magnificent nickel plated brass resophonic guitars, with engraved Australiana scenes, so had one custom made for me.

At a music festival, I met Dan Dubowski, a guitar maker from Batlow. His guitars are made from absolutely gorgeous local timbers, so I bought one of these. I’ve visited him out at his farm in Batlow, to work on one of my guitars, and also pick up another. It was amazing to see what he was creating from cow bones, brass bits and pieces, and timbers he had collected in his travels.

Some years ago, I got back into a covers band known as “Silverhair”, made up of guys and girls of about my era, and we play out and about a little bit. And yes, this has meant getting back into electric guitars again, and onto that learning curve of amps and sound effect pedals.

But playing with other musicians - especially guitarists who are far better players than I – is a real inspiration, keeps me practicing and helps me look out for new guitars! I’m currently working with a US ‘62 reissue Fender Jaguar, and a ’62 US reissue Fender Telecaster custom I tracked down on E-bay. But don’t get me started on internet buying… that’s another story for another time. I’d better get back to my search engine!

One last tip. (A really controversial idea... you’ve heard before, but it works! An idea that is guaranteed to bring you before the Domestic Appeals Tribunal with cranky family members, but will improve your playing and keep your love of the guitar alive.)

Always have at least one guitar out and on a stand in the corner of a room you visit often. Yes, it will get a bit dusty, and may get swiped occasionally by the tail of a passing dog, but it reminds you it’s there. They are pieces of artwork in themselves, and I, for one, can never walk past a guitar without handling it.

Gnome Links:

* Dan Dubowski Guitars can be seen at www.dandubowski.com
* Jacksons Rare Guitars is at www.jacksonsrareguitars.com/splash.html
* Click here to go to: Why I Love the Big Bodied Guitar, by Ben Little