Oops, you’re right. I just mis-heard. I though he looked too wholesome.
::snerk:: thanks.
Please just say something if the geekery runs too thick.
The original Clapton Sigs have Lace Sensors, as do some of the limited edition Graffitti-painted Strats he’s been using on his later tours. Later EC Sigs have switched to either Vintage Noiseless or another new pickup. They change quite a bit. By the way, where is **Crotalus ** in this thread? He knows more about Clapton’s playing style that I could ever hope to…
As for replica’s - they typically give the prototype replica to the artist. Jimmy Page has a few of his Jimmy Page Les Pauls (yes, fans, a double Sig guitar). Andy Summers is touring with his prototype limited edition Tele (by the way, if you are reading this thread, you may have guitar-geek tendencies. If so, I can’t recommend Summers’ memoir, One Train Later, highly enough. Summers was a journeyman player during the Brit Blues guitar explosion and was at the nexus of a number of critical happenings - as with influencing the entire course of guitar history by helping EC get a Sunburst Les Paul, as mentioned above (from a guitar player’s standpoint, this is like helping Neil Armstrong down the steps) - all this before finding international fame and respect as part of The Police. What’s more, Summers can write. The reason I mention it here is because he spends a few brief paragraphs discussing his legendary Tele. The way he sums up how he feels about it reads like poetry to a guitarist who has a tool he also recognizes as uniquely his.)
By the way, that girl player/singer seems really solid - great chops for straight-up pent blues playing.
I saw Hendrix light that strat up, nice show. Wondered what happened to it.
How about Townsends axes he bashed in the early days?
I dont think anyone could not enjoy Clapton.
Love Alvin Lee, Robin Trower, Jeff Beck, Winter Bros., Stevie Ray Vaughn!
I use a strat-style Epiphone with a couple of PAF’s, and just was gifted an 84 Flying V.
Thanks for all the great info!
Oh yeah!
The OP = sow’s ear.
Replies = silk purse.
Recently paid off my daughter’s Strat. Would’ve happened long ago had it been a lesser guitar, but Wife said, “If you ever buy an electric guitar, don’t go cheap like you do with everything else.” I could’ve bought a Squire fake Strat, but I’d still be making the modifications necessary to make it playable.
“No, dear, you can’t play it yet. Get me my files and get back to me in a month.”
A decent axe is a bargain. So are decent files, and I don’t work anymore where I can collect the files the tool and die guys have thrown out.
thread seems to morphed into guitartists with one guitar. the blues guys have been left out. IIRC muddy played one Fender telecaster (or was it a broadcaster?).
BB King of course with lucille. not sure if there were multiple incarnations but he played 250 shows per year for decades.
pretty sure the hook only had one guitar but cannot remember what it was.
herbert sumlin, guitarist for the Howlin’ Wolf tells the tale that when they finished the London Howlin’ Wolf Sessions recording, Clapton took herbert home in a limo. took him to the guitar collection room and said “pick one you like.”
Now I’m back on line. Turns out that fender now has a Muddy Waters signature guitar - much in the same vein as Blackie. If I could play anything beyond the Mannish Boy rhythm, I’d buy this sucker. Only a thousand bucks.
Can’t find a site link but Epiphone Guitar (a division of Gibson) celebrates John Lee 's 50th Anniversary by creating a 50th Anniversary Edition guitar in his name. John Lee played a semi hollow body.
BB King has had countless Lucille’s - if BB played it, it was named Lucille. He plays a variety of ES 355’s - ES 335’s that have more tone-switching features and more gold and fancy stuff. Sometimes he plays ones that have no f-holes even though they are semi-hollow, in an attempt to reduce feedback.
John Lee Hooker played similar guitars.
Hubert Sumlin played (plays - I think he’s still playing) LP Goldtops with P-90 pickups (Soapbars, the kind Gibson used before introducing the humbucker in '57 - they’re the kind I use…) just like Freddie King did at first (Freddie switched to ES 347’s and 355’s in the mid-60’s)…
You mention that the thread has morphed from Blackie to guitarists in general. To me, it is about whether a guitarist is known for their relationship with a single guitar or make/model. Clapton is known for Blackie now, but in the 60’s he was known for playing Les Paul sunbursts, and that fact is pivotal, so I was just discussing that…
I saw Clapton in 1976. He was playing ‘Blackie’ and a 335 for slide. I saw him under the greatest concert circumstances of all time. He did two warm-up gigs for his tour at Hemel Hempstead. at that time a satellite city outside London. For God knows what reason I just assumed that if my wife and I turned up we could scalp tickets at the door, which we did. The audience was only a few hundred people. Up the back of the hall was a bar and seating. So you could go and buy a pint, sit down and watch for a while and then wander down, across the floor and stand a few feet away from Clapton and watch him play. Then back to the bar…repeat
We should have gone the next night though, because Clapton blew his voice out the first night and the second night he just played guitar and got his mate Van Morrison to do the vocals.
Sounds wonderful! But Clapton played slide? Are you sure? I don’t know that he plays slide - he has always relied on others to do that. I don’t mean to state you’re wrong - you were there! - but it is news to me and I’m curious…
[geeking out]
The obvious cite is Derek and Dominos where Duane Allman plays slide while EC plays conventially. In the amazing, must-own DVD Tom Dowd: The Language of Music, EC discusses how he and Skydog found they were kindred spirits, but trying to get to the same place by different means - Duane by slide, EC by conventional playing.
On recent tours, Derek Trucks - Butch Trucks’, one of the Allman Brother’s original drummers’, nephew - plays slide to complement EC’s playing. And DT is, along with folks like Sonny Landreth, the best slide player out there these days…his CD Songlines has this middle-eastern / Indian raga-type song on it where he plays slide - weird, hunh? But it sounds perfect - like “of course slide guitar goes with that stuff - didn’t you know?”
[/geeking out]
This reminds me, I’m trying to sell my Strat. Any takers?
That’s not Clapton playing slide on “Motherless Children” on 461 Ocean Boulevard? And he’s credited with playing dobro on the album. (“Let it Grow”, “Please Be With Me”)
I saw Clapton in the summer of '74. It was the “comeback” tour he was doing after he got of heroin rehab. Pete Townsend toured with him, and introduced him on stage - I think Townsend was involved in helping EC kick heroin.
In any event, I could swear Clapton played slide during that show, but I was rather chemically imbalanced myself that night, so I doubt anything I swore to could stand up in court! 
Townshend definitely helped him kick.
As for stuff off 461 - no clue. I haven’t immersed myself in that one…
Mach Truck - wha’cha got? After playing a Strat pretty much exclusively for over a decade, I am on an extended break, but I know a few folks who play…fill me in.
When you buy “used” guitar, does the mojo go with it?
I know you said the comment in jest, but there’s a lot of components to mojo, some of which are real and some are purely psychological. A broken-in guitar plays differently - if it is a Fender, the neck settles into the bolt-on pocket more securely; the edges of the neck get rolled over a bit. The fingerboard can get slightly scalloped, the whammy bar’s (on a Strat) springs get broken in just right - you get the idea. There is a big set of believers that the wood of any guitar, including a solid body, must vibrate regularly. With acoustics it is standard, commonly accepted fact that a guitar in storage must be played for a few hours before it can “open up” - many players think that years of steady use opens up a solidbody, too.
Some of that stuff - e.g., rolled edges, slight scalloping - can be “relic’d” into a new guitar - and frankly, they feel great. Instant mojo. Other things - including the intangible *something * that some folks think can inhabit a beat-to-shit, road-tested, working player’s tool - are more elusive. If you believe that stuff.
Jest? Why no! I was hoping to go to a charity auction tomorrow and play like Buddy Guy by Wednesday. 
Here’s an excellent pic of Buddy at work. Saw him on Austin City Limits, I think it was, quite a while back.
ACL’s a great program, btw.
Everyone mark on your calendar that you were present when WordMan wrote something incorrect.
Not incorrect in the “what you said is wrong” sense. In the “oops, no apostrophe there” sense.
Oy - everyone is a critic!
I have to check in on this thread - it’s fun to enjoy the details. Check it out - I went to a friend’s band tonight; just got back. One of the guitarists has a 1954 Stratocaster - that’s right; the first year they were produced. I can’t believe he brought it out - he never, ever plays it. I practically had to drug his drink to get him to let me play it about a year ago. The thing is - it’s totally worth it. So many times guys have poured money into a vintage guitar and it is a good, solid player, but nothing special. But this one lives up to the hype; by far the best Strat I have ever played. If it was mine, I couldn’t keep my hands off of it…
Also - I assume folks reading this are checking the “guitar gods” thread - I would be interested in folks POV on what tracks they’d put on a mix tape…