The tools of the trade:
Left to right: chair; ashtray; 74 Tele Custom, twang and roar all in one; Cimar Strat
copy, Jap and quite old, actually very nice if you like strats and it's a hardtail
so it stays in tune, hiding behind an Ashbury National copy, the only new guitar
I've bought for years, used on the Devil album;
Wilko Johnson-style home-made electric which I use for slide (last track on album)
- I found it in a charity shop for six quid and it makes everyone point and laugh
until they hear it...; Gibson B25, '65ish, with an Ashworth pickup under the saddle
for live work, but miked up on the album; a bag of beer, often essential to the operation
of most guitars; a 15watt Vortexion valve amp, circa '62, sports a 10" Wharfedale
and is true sonic Nirvana (phrase © Rob Millis), holding up a brass slide, Shubb
capo, cheap lighter; a huge beast of a concert archtop called a Radiotone, solid
spruce carved top, maple sides, ebony board, which was in a horrible state when I
bought it for sixty quid in a junk shop - some loving care and repair later and it's
the loudest and biggest-sounding thing I ever thumped. I know this is all a bit anorakish
but as far as I'm concerned guitars are one of the most fascinating things the universe
has to offer, right up there with sex, drugs, rock'n'roll, cricket - have I left
anything out? Well, yes, beer, actually.
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