Guitars
1999 Paul Reed SmithMcCarty
This guitar features a mahogony body with a mahogony set neck. I bought this guitar used about a year ago. The neck has a rosewood fingerboard and vintage tuners with standard dot inlays. The body has a bookmatched flame maple top in vintage sunburst. The pickups are stock McCartys. The newer CNC manufactured PRS guitars are much maligned but this is a very nice piece. With the neck pickup set even with the body you get a very nice open, warm blues tone. The tone knob can be pulled out for a coil tap to proudce a telecaster style of tone.
1989 35th Anniversary Fender Custom Shop Strat
Serial #002 of 500! This guitar features an alder body and a maple neck. I bought this guitar new off the rack in 1990. I traded a late '70's strat, a Washburn bass and a Yamaha bass amp plus some cash to purchase it. The neck has an ebony fingerboard and the body features a sunburst quilted maple top. The guitar came stock with gold lace sensor pickups and the Clapton active electronics package. I removed the stock pickguard and replaced it with a pickguard wired with Fender Texas Special Pickups. The combination of the ebony neck and the maple top gives this strat a brighter, biting tone. The bridge has also been upgraded with a set of stringsaver saddles, because I was breaking so many strings at the bridge. The stringsaver saddles definitely help a lot with string breakage and are well worth the money!
1995 G&L Legacy Special
My #1. This guitar features a swamp ash body with a maple neck. I bought this guitar new the last week I was in the Navy back in '95. The neck features a rosewood fingerboard with sperzel locking tuners and the body is one piece swamp ash finished in honeyburst. I replace the stock blade pickups with Fender Fat 50's and I love it! The Fat 50's get great vintage clean tones and really sound nice once you turn up the gain. They aren't really hot enough for high gain sounds, but the PRS and Custom Shop strat cover those areas nicely. This guitar has also had the bridge upgraded to stringsaver saddles to reduce string breakage. I used to break almost a string every two hours on this guitar. Now, I will break about one string a week.
