The Night I Played Link Wray’s Guitar
Last month guitar legend Link Wray passed away at his Copenhagen home at the age of seventy-six. A master of raw tone and minimalist riffs, Link Wray was the great grandfather of the power chord.
Last month guitar legend Link Wray passed away at his Copenhagen home at the age of seventy-six. A master of raw tone and minimalist riffs, Link Wray was the great grandfather of the power chord.
Why is it that so many people think that there are two kinds of guitar player — rhythm and lead? I’ve been asked the question a million times in my playing career, mostly by beginners and non players. “What do you play? Rhythm or lead?” like they were two different instruments. I like to say I play music.
Accordions. If you play guitar, you probably don’t think much about them. But from several perspectives they played an important role in giving the guitar a boost to prominence that it now enjoys. A role that is nicely evidenced by this very swell c. 1967 Galanti Grand Prix electric guitar.
Hollands The Gathering are in the studio working on their new album this month and sporting a rack full of new Eastwood Guitars. Also, fellow Torontonians Stars, Broken Social Scene and Metric are wrapping up their tours this month featuring their new Eastwood Airline Guitars, as is Maximo Park with Eastwood Airline and Ichiban guitars. Get out there and support live music!
That’s where capos come in. Whoever invented the guitar must have already thought of the capo, which compensates for the unfriendly keys. A simple idea, it effectively moves the nut up the neck by clamping down all all strings at once. The result is to raise the overall pitch while keeping the relative tuning of all the strings intact. This allows the player to choose another key to play in, a more friendly key. I should really say ‘pretend key’ because the key doesn’t change at all. Only the fingering changes, as if it were a new (friendly) key.
In 1967 Lipsky introduced a line proto-copies carrying the Domino brand name. Most were inspired by European models such as the EKO Violin guitar. Among the offerings were two models sporting a California cache, the #502 Californian, an asymmetrical copy of a Vox Phantom, and the #CE82 Californian Rebel (wouldn’t California Rebel have made more sense?) shown here.
My solution was an easy to build, self-made amp stand. It’s made out of 3 wooden boards and 4 movable angles. Since I use this construction, I always can hear myself properly, which makes playing much easier of course. My engineer (on live gigs) does not have troubles anymore with the sometimes extreme highs, because the speakers look upwards now. And, most important, I can use any of the three amps I own, without changing the look or diminish the worth of my amps by drilling holes.
As a guitarist who has always played with my fingers, as opposed to picks, I have always been very interested in bass notes. My right-hand thumb is always free to go looking for bottom end notes, and I’d like to pass on some of what I know.
Now, these are known as Shaggs models because they’re what the Shaggs played, not because of some big corporate endorsement deal! No one knows who sold the Avalon brand. Mailorder? An area music store? An auto supply store? All possible. Nor who made them. Nothing like them shows up in the reference books. I’m not even sure when they were made, but 1967 or ’68 is a good guess. Japanese guitarmakers were competing with the Europeans early on in the 1960s and some of the earliest ‘copying’ was of European models.
Fellow Torontonians Metric are on the move this month. The tour kicked off with back to back SOLD OUT shows in Toronto this past week. It was a treat to see Jimmy and Josh ripping up the stage with their new Eastwood AIRLINE guitars. Tour Dates: 09/28/05 Toronto ON The Phoenix Concert Theatre (all ages […]
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