gobsmacked. Perhaps you turn green with
envy when you hear tales of people finding
goldtops in attics, or Supro Thunderbolts and
Maestro fuzz pedals at garage sales. Surely
you wonder why you sneak expensive fuzz
pedals past your better half as remorselessly
as an unfaithful man scrubs lipstick off his collar. I don’t doubt that you also heat up the
soldering iron with the mere thought of Dirk
Wacker’s latest “Mod Garage” column, just
like I do. You know exactly what I mean, and
on some level, like me, you truly hope and
pray that you never get well. I mean, really.
Who wants to find their rig and be done?
Professional Help
I decided to get help—not necessarily to cure
me of my GAS but rather to crack the code of
it. I arranged a meeting with the manager of
Mental Health Services at Concordia University
in Montreal, Dr. Jeffrey B. Levitt, and decided
to see if he could help me finally snatch that
damn pebble out of that calloused ol’ hand.
Dr. Levitt isn’t your everyday quackery-spouting
egghead. He’s actually one of us. About a baritone neck away from his framed psychology
license in his office is a calendar boasting all
of the solid lumber coming out of the Fender
Custom Shop. On top of his desk, where other
psychologists might have a Newton’s Cradle of
clacking steel balls, he has a nickel-covered set
of Throbak humbuckers. Dr. Levitt’s quest for
tone has led him to a ‘ 92 Fender Custom Shop
Telecaster that he plugs into a 65amps London
head with a matching 2x12 cab, but his quest
for tone remains as insatiable as mine.
“Very few people actually attain what they are
desiring,” Dr. Levitt told me soon into our conversation. He went on, laying a clear foundation
of thought from which we’d further poke and
prod, “People will get a Gibson and a great
amp and create a great sound but it’s never
satisfying enough. To use an analogy, vanilla is
great and is probably the best ice cream flavor
but you when you see strawberry and chocolate and other flavors you have to dip in and
attain it. The sonic vocabulary is so vast that
once you get one type of tone it remains to
be only one paragraph of one chapter of one
story. I know people who are just crazy about
fly-fishing and they will just obsess with water
temperature, the type of fishing line, altitude,
etc. and it’s no different from being a guitar
enthusiast. Once you become passionate about
something, the quest is never over. The quest,
though, proves to be even more enriching than
reaching the ultimate.”
I actually followed that. Bought it, too. From
there, we both knew where this was going. I
had more questions, and it was clear that with
his background as both a tone junkie and a
psychologist, I had the right person to ask.
Where’s the Rub?
Usually, the seed of a guitar sound I want to
attain is planted by a favorite record. The inspiration for the aforementioned Les Paul/Marshall
revelation came directly from Thin Lizzy’s
Jailbreak record. As soon as I heard the midr-angy crunch of the twin Les Paul and Marshall
pairing on the title track, I was hooked and so
it began. Quickly, my stock Gibson “Shaw”
pickups seemed thin in comparison with Scott
Gorham and Brian Robertson’s twin attack. I
have now had every pickup combo imaginable
in that guitar and have gotten the closest with
a bone nut, TonePros aluminum tailpiece and
bridge, RS Guitarworks pots and capacitor, and a
WCR coils American Steele set of pickups. I truly
love the sound of that setup, but you guessed
it—I’m still not holding the Thin Lizzy cigar. I
know I’m not alone in having a story like that.
“The more glorified an artist is, the more people
will want to attain that fame, beauty and sound,”
Dr. Levitt said. “We want to say that the tone
is in the fingers but it’s very difficult to measure
that and recreate that, so we go to other measures to attain cause and effect. Especially with
signature series instruments, there is a fallacy
that we will get this one-to-one correspondence
with the person who inspires us.” I believe that
on some level we all know what Dr. Levitt is
referring to; we just don’t want to admit it.
“What does happen, though, is that these
artists will provide a path,” Dr. Levitt suggested with a smile, “and as interests in other
tones broaden, we will inevitably synthesize
these tones and that’s where our own signature sound starts appearing.” My own
FEATURE
signature sound? The longer I thought about
that, the heavier that concept became.
Yes, Jazzmaster
Most of my amp, guitar and pedal choices are
based on records I have become emotionally
attached to. I want to recreate those emotions
in my own playing. Television guitarist Tom
Verlaine’s clean, angular and outside jazz guitar
lines truly inspired me and had me researching
his gear and finally hunting down and procuring a ’ 66 blackface Super Reverb and a pair of
Jazzmasters (seafoam green’ 61 and a transition-year tobacco ’ 65). Do I sound like Tom Verlaine?
Not even close. Do I love the sound of my ’ 65
into the Super Reverb? Let’s just say I know that
the hair on the back of your neck will stand at
attention when I tear into “Marquee Moon.”
Oddly enough, before I was on a Verlaine trip
my obsession with Jazzmasters came from
guitarists like Sonic Youth’s Lee Renaldo and
Thurston Moore and Dinosaur Jr.’s J Mascis.
These mavericks were trying to remove themselves as much as possible from the classic
Page, Clapton and Hendrix tones that a plethora of players were trying to shoulder up against.
Another thing that I now see clearly is that my
infatuation with classic Jazzmaster tones was a
blessing for me as well as for other less financially endowed riffmeisters. The Jazzmaster’s
doormat reputation had something to do
with the slim price tag attached to its extra
wide head stock. Heck, that could have been
the same reason that threadbare rockers like
Renaldo and Mascis’ gravitated towards them.
As you may know, when Fender introduced
the Jazzmaster in ‘ 58 at a hefty price of $326 it
was considered Fender’s top-of-the-line instrument. In a particurly skewed marketing attempt,
Fender tried to snare the jazz guitar market
with a poor choice of a name and a sound that
had strong emphasis on pick attack and treble
which was the polar opposite of the warm, Wes
Montgomery-like tone that jazzbos were after.
When the dotted-eighth players turned their
noses up at Jazzmasters, surf bands were swift
to pick them up, plug them into their reverb
