Mascis and a Sunrise-pickup-equipped Gibson CF- 100 playing at the 2010 SXSW festival.
Photo by Kelly Davidson | etchedonfilm.com
Okay. Let’s switch gears a
bit and talk about the guitar
that you’ve been famous for
over all these years. What’s
the story behind your first
Jazzmaster?
I got it from a place called
Slimy Bob’s Guitar Rip Off
shop in Connecticut. He’d
always advertise all the stuff
he had in the local paper, The
Valley Advocate. I wanted to get
a Strat and I’d saved up money.
There was one for $400 and
the store was pretty far away for
me—over an hour or an hour-and-a-half drive. When I finally
got there, he was like, “Oh
yeah, the Strat—that’s $450.” I
didn’t have that much, but he
had a Jaguar and a Jazzmaster
that were cheaper. The Jaguar
was $200 and the Jazzmaster
was $300. I thought the Jaguar
looked cooler, but the neck on
the Jazzmaster felt better. It was
longer, worn down, and it had
the big Grover tuning pegs—
which somehow impressed me
from seeing them on, like, Peter
Frampton’s Les Paul or something. They were all crammed
in on one side of the Fender. So
I went for that one.
Where is that one now—do
you still have it, or did you
sell it along the way?
I sold it to the Experience
Music Project, this museum
in Seattle.
If you had gotten the Strat
you originally wanted, would
that have changed your career
at all?
Yeah, probably. For one thing, I
probably wouldn’t have a signature model Strat.
You favor a high action on your
guitars, right? I heard your
motto is that action can never
be too high, only too low.
Whenever I get the guitars
set up, the [repair] guys are
always like, “We can fix the
action,” but I always like the
action super high—just so I
can bend the strings, I guess.
Jumbo frets also seem easier for
me. I always use new strings
and they’re pretty slippery. If
I didn’t use new strings, they’d
break a lot. So I change them
every day.
Live, how many backup gui-
tars do you have waiting in
case of a string break?
I’ve done a lot of shows with
just two guitars. I’ve been
breaking the B string lately, so
after half an hour I switch to
the other guitar, and the guy
will change the B string before
it breaks. That’s worked out. I
use .010s for strings.
What’s the origin of the
purple sparkle?
It’s just two things that I like
together. I like sparkly things
from playing drums—they
always had blue sparkles or silver
sparkles, and I had painted some
of my guitars with sparkles.
Purple is my favorite color. So
it’s a combination I guess.
What does the rest of your
electric-guitar rig consist of,
and how has it evolved over
the years?
I’ve tried to get it smaller. At
one point, I had a suitcase with
stuff in it, and then one day I
got this giant rack that was like
a refrigerator. From then on,
I’ve been trying to scale it down
from there. Now I’ve just got a
big pedalboard, and everything’s
just on the board.
What pedals do you have
on there?
Z. Vex made me a pedal with
two Box of Rocks in it, and
Dr. Scientist made me a pedal
with a Woofer Wailer and a
Frazz Dazzler. I also have an old
Electro-Harmonix Big Muff,
an RMC wah, an Electro-Harmonix Electric Mistress,
a Megavibe Uni-Vibe copy,
and an Eventide TimeFactor
