The Collection: Joe Bonamassa Nerdville East

Hello everyone, mark agnesi, here for gibson tv, today I'm in downtown nashville, tenn, going to see my guitarist friend joe

bonamassa

. Now Joe is the leading blues guitarist of his generation, but he has also become infamous as one of the world's greatest collectors of vintage guitars. world and with 22 consecutive number one albums under his name and constant tours around the world, his

collection

has only grown. What you will see may surprise you. This is the

collection

of Joe Bonamassa. Nerdville East. Welcome to Nerdville East. Label. You are a good man, thank you, thank you. for inviting us, you're the first one with cameras here, it looks good, thanks for inviting us, there's so much to see, it never stops being overwhelming from the front door, how many people do you know that have a 50's arrow that also heats up? the apartment in the middle of summer and a rikkenbekker stern in its lobby this is before you pass go pick up 200 men there's a lot to see here let's take a look at the rest of the place it's pretty quick okay so we're here in the living room.

Nerdville East room. I always knew you as a California boy when you decided to become a coastal here. You know, I've been actively working in Nashville for the last, I would say, 10 years writing records and I find myself traveling here in my free time. You know, and spending a lot of time here during the trip when I was off on tour and everything finally worked out, you go from life on the road, life in hotels, to traveling here for work, life in hotels and you're fine, It seemed like a natural progression to come here and set up shop and it was great.

I've been here for three years and really love the friendliness of the city. There are very talented people living in Nashville. It is a very welcoming city. It's a great place to work and I found this place. I bought it for my friend and he wanted to live in a building and you know, be able to walk around and rest if he wanted, so it was a perfect fit when I found out you already had something going on in California when you saw this place. Did you start having visions of where all this stuff was going to go?

I have been here several times for the 4th of July party and at this location you can see how the Nashville fireworks show was one of the best in the country. I always say you know I want to buy a place like this you know my friends in the city center and by chance a week later he called me and said hey I'm thinking about selling an apartment do you know anyone who is interested? going, I know the things that are there, you know this place has progressed because I would go off the road and a lot of times they would throw equipment here and I kind of see things that I go that will fit there and that will fit there and then you know, as a person addicted to These things, you know how things go, it escalates, so this place looked very different before three years, you know.

On the other hand, I look at the photos and that video that he made that reverb place in California and it looks empty compared to what it is now and you know, most of the comments on the video were like man, you're crazy, I think you should having seen that now, if you think I'm crazy, then the house seems smaller, you know, believe it or not, this place is 2350 square feet, it seems claustrophobic, but you know, when you start playing 20, 30 amps and 100 guitars in the apartment, it's a little crowded, I know where every guitar is, every amplifier.

I know where I bought it, I know how much I paid for it, I know if it's in storage, I know if it's been used visitor, it's like you need two days to figure out what's here. I can only tell you anything. You know whatever you're looking for, I go, oh yeah, around the bend, take 10 steps, look up, you know what I mean, it's like that, you know the nature of collectors, you're intimately involved in it, this is where it all started for les paul 1952 um pretty good pretty fair original owner um frozen knobs just fun I still have the flat strings from about 40 years ago I like it like that and I played it on a Joanne Conner record and it just sounds great with the flats is what I should have now you have a place in the you have a place here you also have a place in new york now what guitars live where and you have specific reasons why certain guitars live in certain places I do ii Yes, Los Angeles was my base of operations for 20 years and the museum aspect of my collection is there.

The cleanest, the rarest of the rare. Black Bang. Is there? Are there all custom colors? Brown uh brown um cmi guitar ta uh yeah, I bought years ago, I mean Strats Teles 335, clear finishes. Sometimes I have to pinch myself. The things I keep here are tools and since we practice here, we record our records here many times, so I keep the toolkit here. I keep the tele tele devices that I play I keep the Les Pauls that I play everything that's in rotation form, it mostly stays here, there's a method to the madness and you know, the amps that I keep here are working amps, those from California.

They are generally very well preserved but very poorly maintained I like the sound of that amplifier I go to I don't even know if it would sound I don't know if that thing works anymore It's really interesting look how perfect you know I look at it, I'm a custodian during the time I'm in this planet of things that I really love and want to preserve and use and appreciate and be surrounded by, it's a personal choice, it's nothing other than whether you were collecting like we talked about before about Coca-Cola memorabilia or for what you know and what You know, but the best thing about things like this is that they're tangible and you and I use them for my work, okay, Mike, this is uh, this vault was supposed to have retina scanning, fingerprint identification, card dual key, key card, you know everything you need just to access the home screen of your iPhone, but no, oh wow, that's a lot of brown cases, yeah, just one, uh, that's a nice old guitar . a good bunch of old guitars, that's a lot of guitars, I love a lot of guitars and you know I'm very picky, a good word, think about my walls not having dents because I'm getting older too, I'm just more nervous so, but on a lot of guitars, scratches are allowed, scratches are allowed, you can't, you can't worry about scratches, today we're going to put out a bunch of stuff for you, oh man, okay, we could start with the first brown case, here let's start. with the title um, be careful what Italian restaurants you go to in Sherman Oaks, California, because I can save you from trouble.

Yes, this showed up at a place called Barone's Italian Restaurant in Sherman Oaks during a Christmas party for a group of like-minded guitar nerds. it was painted red, it had no parts because the parts box my friend David left at his guitar store, he is guitarist David Neely and he removed all the parts including the original pickups, hardware, pots and hardware to all the tuners, and I left. The back was just a shell when I saw it and it was painted red and it turned out that it was probably one of my best finds. Look at this top.

Lazarus rose from the dead. I bought it in 1963. The guy who gave it to me. for a hundred dollars and in 1967 he said I don't like all these lines called there it bothers me it looks like my side table so I painted it candy apple red one of the things is to identify this type of guitars there is a lot of your information below of this truck, which is the original truck, it's underneath, here, there's, there's, there's a tenant at the door and fortunately what he didn't paint here were the neck pins and the discharge route, and he didn't take pictures here inside. idea if you are going to refinish 59 les paul please don't refinish 59 less paul do it yes please don't do it but he was lucky because you can recognize what is here here you can die a little here in general here and here the center told you know exactly what this was there were some disagreements at the table and again there was some joy you know and and and a lot of ubera until the end and some speculated that it was a conversion some said it's 60 if they go no no no no no look at the holly badge it is original guitar comes out a box of spare parts I see two beautiful m69 rings I see two intact puffs I go as if I saw a button to see the belt and then I go, fortunately you have whole pots, the belt was intact and it said week seven 1959 if it walks like a duck quacks like a duck, what is it?

So I took a chance and made the judge an offer. I wanted the guitar. restored and brought this Gibson ad to David and he pointed to this photo of a Sunburst Les Paul and said it used to look like this and can you restore it? My budget is fifteen hundred dollars, so instead of maybe he wants her. He doesn't want to sell it and whatever I said, but I gave him the offer and he accepted. I'll call him and it must have been quite tempting because at the time he was walking down the stairs with guitars kneeling across the street. to the guitar center because I need to go get some Ernie Ball guitar strings because I don't have any at the house at the central intersection of Sunset and Gardiner.

My name is David. I just saw it 30 years ago about 500 meters away, yes, of course. Could you shout at me through the window? He's coming back, he's going to come back, he's going, he's going, he's going, he's going to accept your offer. I sent Kim Lefleur the next day after I received the check and um, Kim started looking. and he started working a little bit under the red and you went right after kim kim knows what he's looking at in my opinion he knows what he does best in the business and he goes after it to find out if there's a spotlight and you see this seam, you say, oh, great, my hypothesis was correct, then suddenly all this wood appears and you say, wow, and this is how it was finished 59 les paul called lazarus and it sounds wonderful, this thing had been under red paint . for over 50 years and now its a les paul sunburst again and its getting a second life and seems to be similar to the nikki carmelita range snakebite guitars and has a slimmer profile 59 neck which i like but it's lovely. story, it's a beautiful guitar and it's an original case, it just shows that these things are still available, no it's not, you know, it's not all said because it's still available, so there is a guitar that the people at One Lazar associates you with Sunburst Les Paulom, yes.

Do you remember the first time you got one because I guess when you were a kid you probably had a chance to play it? Do you remember the first burst that you were able to play from the first person I played in the Philadelphia fall of 1993, my father was at that time? I was in the guitar business and there was this 58 Sunburst guy walking in and he recognized me from a band I was in called Bloodline and said, Hey kid, you should try this, you know? So she was 58 minus Paul and I couldn't. I didn't understand how to play it, I knew it was a very valuable guitar at that time.

I think the asking price was sixteen thousand dollars, which was incredibly crazy, incredibly expensive. The next one I had to play, probably a year later, was the one that went into the guitar house. The guy wanted a car and they said: what kind of car are you? I want a Lincoln Town Car, so they went out and bought them a Lincoln Town Car and traded it for a guitar. Try to do that accounting at the end of the year. What is this? What is this? What are your business expenses? Lincoln Town Car. i played one and i played a few others in the rumble seat and the first real experience i had with a bunch of them was in 2008 in springfield, missouri, my friend tom whitrock, the legendary guitar dealer, blew up as a collector and I ran into his store and he's like hey you're joe right I'm like he's like hey you want too I see some bursts and it's like you don't hear that in a musical every day like we burst into plural and Suddenly, these chainsaw cases begin. coming out and I'm like, like always, you hook up a chainsaw case with a deluxe 72 sandwich body, yeah, it comes out 58, then it comes out Donna, then it comes out Sandy, all of that just came back from Arlington and that's when I started saying aha , this is now me.

I realize it's because I had a store for myself and an audience with these things and I started to feel the differences in the necks because the predominant narrative was that the 58 was a stick neck, then the 59 was this one, and then the 60 It was the little one they had. They vary, yes, and the different ranges of serial numbers vary within the year and I and I honestly gravitate towards the 60. I like the thinner neck and I like certain 59s that aren't too big and I like the ones that have bigger frets because The 58's came out when I got the first one in 2010, then it blew up on every show a couple appeared on and I became known as the guy associated with the Sunburst Les Paul and I think we documented between Mike Hickey and I, we've documented more of 200. , and when you handle as many as I do, you start to notice the similarities and you start to be able to identify guitars that are not all originals and just fakes and it doesn't take long and you can almost do it with You closed your eyes because there was a standard without pun to make those guitars and they applied those same standards to the juniors and specials in the 335, so if you get that weird feeling from the heel of the neck and you knowIt doesn't feel like a Gibson, it isn't.

No, no, it doesn't feel like a sunburst, Les Paul, it doesn't feel like a Gibson and that's the one thing I encourage any collector to get involved in this: understand the manufacturing processes of the time, borrow. steel to play so many examples of vintage gibsons from any era 40's 50's 30's 20's 60's 70's you start to understand the way it would be pragmatic, okay, now I can start to identify the factors, this here, um, it's a guitar that I've known for a long time and I like things with people's names on it, yeah, I just think it's early social media before social media became that ugly thing where people turn on each other it's like, hey, look at me, I'm promoting my business, I'm promoting. my brand I'm promoting my music it's like who's who's playing up there on stage tonight I don't know you I think his name is john so close even though he's so close it's johnny b you know exactly and you know you probably know Bolsonaro or some Italian name that you know that would go all the way to the fifth fret.but um this guitar is from 1960 late 1960 it's eight one four five oh eight one four five The fully tapered neck on this one isn't as bad as the Australian guitar I have but that's that's typical 1966 i love tomato soup guitars i like sunburst because when you want to buy a ball without sunburst, you want it to be sunburst, this is stuck, it was stuck and it was stuck and you don't want to look underneath I just leave it stuck yeah but you know it's johnny b it's always going to be johnny b and they're all original original frets original everything stays in tune.

I've been playing it really well on tour for the last few years and it's just a fantastic instrument. I love this guitar when Elliott had it 10 or 12 years ago and it had those vintage photos and western stuff and when they put it back on sale I said, well, you know, let me see what I can do and I changed some things like we do everyone and I got Johnny B and there he is, uh, he came. portland originally came out of portland in the '80s, 1983 and it was sold for dollars and then it changed hands and stuff like that over the years and it's not fifteen hundred dollars now that's cool this has seen some serious road this came out this was out of me um all of these that we're going to look at today are these are the road dogs these are not Martha Reid or Al Bosco guitars you know and this is a great guitar and it sounds fantastic it just sounds like a jet engine and I love the 60s because they have a slightly shorter neck and tend to bite and not moan, which means they are clearer and more forceful, so they break through.

It's like you know I love the '60s and you know they're great and this is this. it's one of the coolest ones because of the name, totally yeah, and i was really thinking about taking this off and putting joey b on it, so it's close, it's just a few letters away, just tape it up, you know, but you should leave it as it is. beautiful bag for a Cali girl mainly associated with gold t-shirts but you see that Magallanes has a Cali girl but you know what, when you are in the store, think about it in the store and the lady is fishing like you just got a box and many times Gibson was happy to sell you how many times I gave you a box with everything you know which box came back they don't always stay together yeah I think you gave me a skb case pointing to that yeah anyway let's go What it is this?

Oh, this is a furious Cajun that has a lot of red, it has a lot of red, it's a nice color, it's a nice top, very nice chevrons, double white again 1960 07171 and this one has a great story involving Mike Michael Hickey. This guitar is over. in New Orleans it was sold by um I think our friend Vic or through the guy Vic sold it to back in 1990 it ended up in New Orleans and was sold to Steve International Vintage. It had shitty chrome covers on the pickups except the guitar part has a volume change who cares about the real guitar and it ended up in International Village in New Orleans no one went there to see it and you don't know 'Don't think Steve is real , you know there was no rush to sell' "He's a great guy, I love Steve, we're playing the Sanger Theater in New Orleans on Saturday afternoon and I was bored and I asked Mike, I said, Mike, do you want to come to the guitar store, you want to see Steve, I'm sure he'll come." I'm coming down, hey, what's with the explosion?

And I said what is the number I had. The number was smaller than he thought. I said, "Okay," so Steve comes from the concert and I leave like he doesn't really have to ask this question, but I am. curious and I think I have a number in my head I told him if he says it's not a magic number I'll go it's a problem and I have to sell something to pay for it he says magic number shake hands take the guitar come on Make a deal on Monday you know , I'm not going anywhere, my credit is good, thank God, after making a deal with Steve on guitar, Mike finds a copy of Vic Duprey's first book, from the early 90s, I was like the early 90s 90, okay, I'm going, what are you doing?

I want these books and Steve, I don't know what he was thinking, but he just looks at the price of the book, the original price of the rights like the original companies, and he also charges Mike the full price of the book as if it were a New Book only 30 years later and you know Mike is fine, you know he is, he just works and he's angry and he comes out and he's like looking at books and he's like can you believe you just bought the latest volume of Sunburst? Do you know what Mike is talking about? and he says: you know, can you believe it?, you know he charged me full price again on the bus back to the theater.

The next thing he does is hey buddy, here's your guitar and that's a picture, okay, oh, your guitars, oh, seven one, seven one with double. white we're like wait a minute oh shit chrome the chrome wraps were still on yeah let's wait let's wait a minute let's see the next one you know 20 minutes later the wraps come off and there's your guitar post it on Instagram because that's how everyone gets their information and Steve's show is coming up so he shows up early and says man you really got lucky with that double white and we're like an old guitar it wasn't a book in your store , look look at it from time to time so it turned out great and this is the most used guitar consecutively that I have played on stage every show three years 300 shows I use it I use it every night and it's just a great blast hm what we have here's this guitar so it's less balls It's a Les Paul 59, those strange colored pickups with yes, those pickups that are zebra and double white.

This belonged to Craig Chaquiss on the ship Jefferson and that was the guitar he had when he was making records, you know, like Jane and all that. hits they had in the late 70s there was an incident in germany in 1978 where there was some discomfort at a concert at laurel lie the amphitheater where i played in germany lorelei who is in the country they took the guitar it just disappeared on the german airwaves now You know, it passed around collectors and people you didn't know, someone had to know then what it was, it came up again, you know, 20 years later and my friend Harry bought it and then there was a dispute about the provenance, they finally resolved it and I have a damn cabinet full of legal jargon saying it has a clean title it has a clean title everyone is happy that doesn't detract from the fact that it is a beautiful 59 les paul that has a very good rock and roll provenance and I have had this guitar for a time.

It's serial number nine, two, one, eight, zero and as you notice, some of these things are turning brown on the back, like it's pretty bleached, it's not red, it's not sunburst, let's pull, it looks golden and so on. On stage it looks cool, but originally it's a sunburst and if you screw it up and take a poker chip out of your chairs, it's cherry red and there's a chin underneath, but it's a great guitar and it sounds really cool, it's very brilliant and I love it for certain things and I like it for a song called slogin.

I've been playing slogin for about a year. Can you tell me a little bit about double whites and zebras, like when you start seeing them? Because I mean, are they there? certain ranges of serial numbers that if you look you can go on but under those wrappers there are probably double targets or it's really sporadic no I mean there are certain ranges of serial numbers um oh nine hundred Al bosco guitars have double targets and now Call it albosco because I bought it there, I bought it in Albasco. Bosco broke the boss wrappers and my friend ronnie has um broke out like five numbers, he has double white a lot of times you see it in this range a lot of times you know 2100.

You'll see them, you'll see a lot of double 60 numbers, like two, you know the first two , yeah, the two digits are, like 00231 or whatever, you make it up as you go along and what it was basically was a Gibson that they got and they sent these reels when they were taking and no one, they never expected everyone to throw away the covers that they welded on. , they probably would have soldered them if they knew we were going to argue so much. I'm a cover guy so most of my birds have covers but there are a few exceptions where I think they look better as this is one of them that I like, yeah I just like the way it looks see, plus it's a classic looking guitar, you know, Craig used to play it and um and that was, you know, that's what it looked like when he had it and and that and that's cool, so you kind of just want to preserve that problem um finally something more than the brown case, aren't you getting tired of it all? those sunbeams falling to the naked eye, it appears to be a standard mid 60's SG box, yes, and the reason I mention it is because you posted something a long time ago about elvis playing a double neck and I don't have one because it's queer. weird, but I can make one right in front of your eyes with some duct tape, let's start with oh yeah, ugh, the top, this is the Gibson equivalent of a fender six, so it'll be an octave down, an octave down, Well, I have two. tell me those two standard spaces and it would be this would be a standard sg body and they probably didn't sell many of these because it's just a b

east

of a guitar or bass and you know I saw that and I was like Man this is so weird and so cool and you know the fact that you know that tells me like you know Gibson was a manufacturer and they responded to what Fender did and Fender responded to what Gibson was doing and it was this again. and forward and it hasn't changed, you know, for years and you know, it's like finding one of these, you know, it's so rare, I've never, I mean, I've seen eb6, which is like sg, like ev6 style bodies is, yeah, and there is a six. string one uh one puff bass looks like a 335 body but I've never seen this, this is one of the few I've seen like this and it's great and it eliminates the basics as defense of an instrument, in my opinion, because you can play the strings and the rear pickup moves just enough to where it's exactly screeching and you can, you can get your death metal on this melody, this is cool, very cool, remember a long time ago on this recording of this day, I said?

I don't use eBay and none of this is eBay. I guess where this comes from is a contradiction. I mean, this is the only eBay guitar I've ever owned that sold in Houston, oh honey, and it's not particularly old, but it's very. Freddy King specific, someone's right, this would be the same type of guitar from the time that he played on that classic cotton bowl with the big one and I'm a big fan and, uh, the original pick because the original one fell apart and I would say Gibson, the little one. one was like a screen print and you can see some of this green when the pickguard speeds up and it just brings out the gold, but in '72 that was the only year you guys printed truck skins and that's what Freddy and Freddie played I had a 68 and He also had the first one you reissued in what I think is a 345.

These are 355 and I bought it from a guy who was very secretive and this would have kept me off eBay for life. I sent him a check and he's fine. just don't reveal my name because I'm playing, I'm very well known and I'm playing a famous man. I'm like wow, you know, I'm like wow, I'm buying him a guitar, uh, you know, whoever you are. I know I'm someone super famous, you know, I have a guy's name like who, what the hell turned out to be true, he played, he played for a few weeks, he played like a guitar, a famous guy who's in a famous band, but just everything. the fuss and all the secrecy about it and you know, I thought it was, you know, you know, you're buying a David Gilmour guitar, but it's not, but it's very rare to see 72 355.

Do you have anything else that has the relief covered did you try put together a set I have a set you have a complete set I have this set I have a 345 and I have three 35s and no I don't think you know that the 335 has a stamp on it yeah yeah well that's the complete set. I like them. I think you should reissue them. You know they're great. They are great. And that's just another part of the brand. And somehow you know how to update the models you know. The infamous namm shows how important history is to you when you buy something.

I mean, obviously the mint stuff is cool, but playing with it is cool too. It's full of a good story. That is the best. I buy the story. The instrument comes free. I can tell you. you know, there was abig mischief, literally, I'm on tour going up, you know, shelves, you know, putting units, looking for things, taking things out, things that appear, you know, literally, backstage, you know, buying the story, you buy the story and, the most Importantly, you keep the story in the story the guitars and the amps stay together in mine in my collection they don't get separated you know it's like if you buy an electric guitar it comes with an amp put it away it's a set I hate to see them separate because sometimes you can get more money a la carte than for a set, but you also destroyed someone's story and music, you know, I take that very seriously and I take the family's trust in me to maintain these things, play them, enjoy them , photograph them and what is my name walter in the case, man, look, I claim that this is a primitive social network, it's like how do you promote your band, your brand, name yourself as a player?, you've been handing out business cards, You know, those legendary businessmen, John Mclaughlin, would have shared that. you know, electric guitarist, that's how you got your name, you know, and you went to the hardware store, you have these wonderful ones, I love these fonts, these old fonts, they're not made anymore, it was probably all hand drawn before they started producing en masse, this here it is. a 1953 Gibson j200 that was sent back to the Gibson factory and this one is and it goes with a couple of guitars I had two I had a blue one and it has a sunburst and uh peter buck from rowing has another very nice one and it's one of those weird, anomalous guitars where he wanted his name on his fingers they probably wanted to upgrade the bridge they did some warranty work redone it's the headstock logo the logo is so primitive you know really, but it's all made in Kalamazoo Michigan and you know that it's just one of those type of guitars you just go there it's just one of these you know and they added a pickup and a pickup like a j160e or something and jack did everything professional this wasn't pro-am collectors and people you know, in the world they would say, well, it's not worth that much because it's not a totally original production model 53 j-200 in sunburst and then you say, would you rather have a unique piece of factory folk art that you know belongs to someone named walter versus a regular guy, you just know, and that's the difference between preserving history and baseball cards, if you collect baseball cards, you want lou gehrig jim minten, that's the kind of thing you know, this is a anomaly in all that, you know, I know we I talked about you humiliating a lot of acoustic guitars and things that are a little degrading, but you're not that big of a fan of acoustic guitars, but still, if you see something as cool as this, you're over. .

Absolutely understand it, you know, and I like acoustic guitars as tools rather than. I never fell in love with it to the point where other people get into it because I'm not an acoustic musician, these are harder to play, you know, Les Paul and some Gain Man, that's cool. You have to do this to know. but um, that's a beautiful example and it's simple, it's beautiful, uh, unique, it's called walter brown, body, different shape, different shape, are you sick of lifting anymore not, yet, yeah, we will be at the end of the day ? hm these are great guitars and i really really have been using them almost all my professional life gibson 335. this one here is from 1961 and this is a pretty preserved model it's red so you would call it a cherry neck reflector with Cherry dot neck short guard 335 and is well preserved. and my friend John gave this to me in a real vintage model and, um, we were a little afraid to ship it, so he drove it here in Nashville.

These guitars sound good due to the nature of having the block and then the F hole and are known as the burst killers in the sense that they sound amazing and probably more so if you recorded your favorite records on one of these, but on a les paul 335 on the road there's always something on the shelf exactly always something always 335. I like to play blues on the 335, that's the only thing that gives me that bb king feeling, you know, and um, it just blooms like that, it sounds authentic to me, you know, it just blossoms and has that feedback. , and there are some nights, depending on the setting, because I don't use effects, um, sometimes they come back to me and you're like oh, how did you do that and then some nights it's perfect and you just want to bottle it up.

Get to know them and them just so you can stay on message because you know you could do the Nigel Hardnell thing all day. Well, that's this. It's a good example. Murderous black case. Pure black case. Now I always have. I have a couple on the way. Red, two reds. I have a red dot marker and I have one of these red block markers and every time I've been lucky enough to play at the Royal Albert Hall except the first time I had one like that with me and we always test the sound at the junction and there's something about albert hall and that echo and this guitar and my absolute love for eric clapton and his music and his legacy and everything that makes me feel like the happiest sob on the planet this is 1963 I think it was Eric's in 1964 a neck a little different.

The shape of the 64 is a little bigger. I've actually played Eric's guitar and his neck isn't huge, so it's not a typical '64 type of neck. It's closer to this and this is a cool example that came from Atlanta and probably has the smallest bridge. twisted. Pill I've ever heard, just a scream, only that has an extra five percent and the patent number on it, so who cares to prove it doesn't? Some people have bionic vision and can see through the nickel through the coils. the copper wire and all the magnets and the base board and I can see this little black sticker underneath, it's not the same, it doesn't sound the same until you turn it on, yeah they sound pretty similar so now there's a dot on the block. you used to admire these things when you were a kid when you started you said collect when you became a collector i got my first communion money it's the first big payout i went about $200 and i bought a weeping wawa pedal and the first real vintage guitar what i got was an apple of 1971's candy, Big Apple Music, in New Hartford, New York, my dad found it on his way home from work.

I think it cost $175 or $275 and I think for my middle class working parents, I think that was all the money. world, but my dad had some, he looked for some money and bought it for me because he knew I wanted this, it was a big head and it said fender with that old logo and I said, yeah, this is cool, I still have the shell from that guitar today and it's the one that Bibi signed when I first met him, but looking at like a nerd book or a Tom Wheeler book or you know, and even in Guitar World magazine you know the collector's choice every month they would have a whole poster and in april of '88 with george lynch on the cover, i remember pulling out the poster and it was a picture of this cool looking converted black stratocaster that had the initials har for howard reed, howard reed and i stuck it up we had it on the wall when we were children.

I just dreamed about it and then I put up a picture of a Les Paul sunburst and I just dreamed about that and that and you know, three blonde 335s leaning on a brown vibe reverb and I remember I had that and I cut it out of the calendar. . I had all these photos on my wall and I walked in one day and in 2014, when I was going to make my debut at The Ryman Auditorium, I bought a 1955 Black Howard Reed Strat from Gruen Guitars, I bought it and it was a surreal moment in my life, the transition from poster to reality, and the poster was oh my god, look at the patina on the neck and how cool it is and how cool it is, you know it's supposed to sound and it does sound, that's how it will be. be the best guitar ever, the reality when I took it out of the case, no one, we, didn't say it weighed nine and a half pounds, I thought, wow, that's a tough move, but it's them, I'm just a guitar guy , it's good for him and I don't apologize for it because I've been working hard, this is an es 300 and it's probably from 1949 or 1950 and it's a factory inlay on the tex robins collar that says marty, but I'll do testing and it was just a local Nashville Musician who ordered this guitar from Gibson before there was a custom shop like Gibson.

Would you do something? It would make you a buyer. If yes, if you are willing to wait and pay for it, like now, this Labella Strings poster is something that is a big version. Of this, the smaller version is more sought after, but take into account the conditions of this wall. I like the larger version, probably from the early '70s, original ih 72 and it's well framed and that's why I gravitate towards all this stuff, to me it's very organic, it's not, it's not like it's digitally designed, it's that someone drew it or put it together and you know there was another process to get up there it's a 1966 cherry red es330 and its name is bob now bob probably should have put his last name because it could have been anyone, it could have been anyone, but you know what?

We all know about Bob and we love Bob, it makes him much more marketable after the fact, yeah it really opens up the market, don't call me Rob, don't call me Robert, call me. bob, this is a 1959 Gibson bird lamb harlem ode again hand painted on the pick guard again, just one of those things where you just say how great it was, it was custom ordered, it's a custom guitar and it's from factory with nickel two instead of gold, it's nice, nice and That's cool, too, that's cool, and you know, it's just one of those things that comes from the original owner and I guess what his name was.

Cool, that's cool, that's a cool guitar and again, it's folk art and it's just super cool, super fun. to find them like that, then the case says it all, it's a good name to see there. I don't collect celebrity instruments. Terry Reid is an old friend. I met him in 2014 when he was selling his guitar and you know you're a veteran. of the LA vintage guitar scene, what happens is that no one wants to pay Terry and they want to sell it to me and then pay Terry and then not have to withdraw money from his bank account.

This was happening. He was getting a conflicting price. Hey, do you want Terry Reid TV? I finally meet this woman. One of my good friends and the woman have been family for a long time. Libby and I knew that she knew Terry. I called. He said hey do you have Terry Reed's number, I said she said yes, yes, I cold called him Saturday afternoon, I gave him the phone, hi, it's joe bonamassi, joe

bonamassa

, I said, I heard you have your Italian, it's like, but no one wants to pay me. You know, I like her and I don't really understand her accent, but it's mostly sentimental.

I said man, you know my name well enough to pick up a check tomorrow, so I drove to Palm Springs. We had a wonderful afternoon showing me great photographs. I'm a big fan of his music and he was with everyone hanging out with the beatles i was hanging out with hendrix hanging out with steve mary out of the rocks and he's cool if you don't know terry reid check out his music just a time great person and i always say that This is not my guitar even though I bought it for him that day, always his guitar and you don't see a double with a humbucker there another television with a humbugger this one is a little more deteriorated than without the steering wheel and if you watch Terry's video of 1971 at Glastonbury, he has this right and he's as ripped almost as a hacker at the time, he bought it in 1968 when he was the US opening act for Cream's farewell tour in Chicago and when he got to Madison Square Garden he said that the front pickup was squealing and that Dan Armstrong had put a humbucker in it.

End of the story that Terry read after the last tour because he already started, you know, he's starting to be a little bit, he's starting to be. a little more a little warning I'm going to take it down because it's probably almost his last show with me maybe I'll do a couple more and play it in the studio I keep it at home but as for the trip it's too sentimental For me at this moment you know, send it to Europe and in a box and see, man, it's like, it's like I'm in charge of Terry's guitar here, but yeah, it's a beautiful guitar, now guitars are a thing when he started collecting memorabilia. at the point of purchase music store buying things at the point of purchase and it started very, very rudimentary.

I started. I would find a sign on that and it started at a place called Timeless Music in Cleveland and I bought from a guy named Clyde. who bought a bunch of really cool stuff used to be my little secret place where did you find them? I don't know I don't know I don't remember of course I bought a green foam jazz master and a bunch of custom colors stuff that I still have and then on the next trip I bought a mint white glove es 355 1960 cherry red perfectly preserved gold buckle It's scarily clean and I asked them I told them you don't have any old memories around the guys I have this thing so he goes to the basement and he pulls it out and it's a vox pinwheel sign that says it's kind of esoteric and from the ages 60.

I think they made it in 1966. They brought it back to California. They connected it to the wall. This is very funny. I found an RCA sign in North Carolina on a guitar safari and it cost like $100. I hung it on the wall and it looks good with that. I wish I had more things that light up once you're in my weird little orbit once it passes I have a problem.yeah, that's all I see you're going to pay too little for some things you're going to pay too much for a lot of things if you really want you have to offer something fair because I have a conscience, you know, and I don't want to steal from people and I don't want to, I don't want to be known as, oh, you know, it's like, oh, you know, I stole it, you know, I found this little lady's rifle for 150 bucks, you know, because you know you're dealing with people and you want to heal people.

This is actually one of my favorite places in this house because some of this stuff came from a really cool place. I got them from my friend Craig from Boston who bought them 40 years ago and it's a 1968 American folk blues festival, but look at some of the bands, Jimmy Reed, John Lee Hooker, T-Bone Walker. joe williams this loduca accordion you know hey listen to accordion and they need love you know and this is quite strange because there are many posters and signs with backlit guitars how many accordion dealers you know very little these days this base is part of epiphone the brand family Gibson 1958 keep your bikini plackets down there, man, little plackets, bikini plackets upright, I had a great time, I was on uh, on the Grand Ole Opry stage, there's a picture of it, mind, this is a pass tour for the last trip.

I sat with Neil and my friends and traveled last year to Caesar's Palace, which was really cool. I almost broke my foot getting it off the bus. It was worth working. Where would something like this live? It was like a pharmacy. or this is like a pharmacy, a music store, any place you know, even a department like the first center of a department store, this is for televisions, you know, like you know, you have a piping diagram, you have, you know , you know, you know, and it works, you know, and then if you needed valves, they would open the door for you, they would sell you valves and you would keep this here.

It's a great poster. Um Fender introduces the Showman amp, but this is all for center volume. Vibrosonic Bandmaster 310 Band Master Brown. It is difficult to find the central volume. concert pro twin and super, which was their redesigned line in the '60s. they were also making tree dams at the same time, so there was a crossfade, they made tweet harvards champions, they made tweed champions in '63, you know what they would make them until they ran out of parts and you know, super clean solid state rectifiers, leo wanted fidelity and I got it for sure, you've never seen a super white, right, yeah right, there's definitely not two of them, yeah there isn't two of them after they told you it's the only one that exists.

Hey look there's another one this black diamond display has some of the rarest black diamond wire that are blonde versions most of them are black and they're probably from the 40's and would be on the counter at a music store or a pharmacy and you know, imagine seeing that in a Walgreens, something cool, it has a different shape. and he's a weird guy and I'm not even sure how presumptuous he could be when I decided to make a record on Abbey Road.ii I had this idea. I really want to keep it really British and maybe write a song you know on a British guitar, so I decided to contact my friend Rick from New Kingsroad Guitars and bought this guitar from him, which is nice.

How strange, there is something that you don't see every day is zomitis, a flame cap, a flame cap, zombies, yes, and usually those things have the mind recorded, as you know, metal cap, pearl or something like that, and it's a different logo but it's just az and it does something cool and it's on the title track of my new album and i loved it and as soon as i played it i connected with it and it's just a weird sg that almost looks like a yamaha like yeah, like those 2000 S200s. or s2000, so it's made for a guy named Richard Serrard.

These are handwritten letters from Tony himself about the construction and you know, on Zomitus letterhead, you know, Midas letterhead and they stamped it and that's what you know, it was built in my uh, my year of birth. um 1977, so yeah, it's a little weird, but it's cool and it's a great instrument, it's a great guitar, it's super cool. Did any songs come out of this or did I just write a song called Royal, which may or may not be? The title of my new solo from the album coming out in October, actually yeah, so it was inspired by the song and potentially the name of the album.

I wrote the song in 20 minutes with the guitar in my hotel. I took it to James' house and Kevin Shirley and I recorded a song on it. We wrote a song on this guitar and some things just have songs, you know, certain guitars, certain amps just inspired you to a place and this worked and I really love these action adjustment dials, as you know, it's very medieval of it, cool murderer nor me. I've never seen a flared top on that and it's nice in the book that it matches the center seam. It's all in the center seam.

A great case for children. Yes, this is a guild case. A great case. Someone decided to do some folk art on it and Charlie loves it. patton I love charlie patton this came from my father's guitar, I bought it in the '90s and we kept it, you know God, for 25 years and I loved it, it was like Patton and a picture of Charlie Patton and yeah, it's like did you know it's just photos of robert johnson there was only one killer all kinds of yeah, blind jefferson everything so inside this box is a very rare guitar that has nothing to do with any of the individuals in the box ah what is it this when it's in nashville when it's on 615?

This is a grammar guitar made in Nashville, Tennessee circa 1969 and is a Johnny Cash exclusive model. I'm lucky to have these two, this one here is the one I played the song on while driving out into the daylight and it's a great studio instrument as it sounds very smooth. Very rare guitar, not many people have ever seen the Johnny Cash model, is this a green explosion or is it a normal one that is a little tinted? Yes, but that is the most collectible color of these. Yes, yes, the green explosion and they are. They're not really collectible guitars, I mean, in general, if you want to buy a Grammer guitar, you're looking at a two thousand dollar, twenty-five dollar guitar, but they're priced very low, they're made in America and they have maple. on the back but it's very rare to see them show up with a signature and just say johnny cash that's great and the case is even better as far as I understand he had a j45 that he loved and he had a d18 that he loved and it exploded and took what they both liked best and made it like Gibson Martin, a real thing and that's when Johnny Casho was happening right down the street, you know, at ryman's hall and most of the people associated with that fender black malibu.

I'm lucky to have two, I have one that is in perfect condition and it's much greener, almost like the sonic blue and green of the sun, and then this one was a little bit darker and it was played and this one was also played in Vienna and Carnegie Hall and everything else. Great guitar. I love this guitar. Very cool. I bought this guitar in New Orleans, Louisiana. I've bought a lot of nice guitars and it seems like there's always a lot more to come. I'm always lucky in something new. orleans i bought this last year and we were looking for a guitar case for jade mcrae who sings in my band and she has a fender duo sonic and she wanted a case like the famous guitar case and you happened to stumble upon a guitar store called low guitars in new orleans and then this is what ugh ugh you're right 1952 wow, that's not much use, you could do it in a weekend, you could do it, yeah, and in rehearsal, and the best part is all you.

I know it has the original strap, it has the original polished cloth, but everything came off, oh man, Elise Norberg, yen and ian, and some people say that's a shame, the letters are actually similar to mine, they're the part coolest guitar and that's it. you want to find the ladies and gentlemen of the black guard it's as nice as they come and good luck because there are few, not many, that survive this and they came with the famous Fender guitar catalog and you know that Fender was great with advertising , but K guitars were also sold, did you realize that there is an AK guitar, and there are these acoustic guitars that look like TV tuners, there are those where, no, I know if they are just the ones that change the image but it looks like a Telecaster.

It's really what you have to do - this is an early stage primitive fender and it's a mix, not a tone, so plug in both pickups, not out of tune, dead tone, front pickup, main pickup, mix and you've got it all which is one of them the body is clean like a guitar it's usually one of them yeah it's wow and it still has at l

east

the strings on it by the way you never didn't re-string them and some people would say which are original strings. I don't think so, but they've definitely been there a long time, they're heavy and not very heavy, it would be something Fender would have put in there, so they're definitely from the '50s, because you couldn't.

I don't play that thing for a long time, there's no place in the guard or anything, even the middle ones you see have a place and they play rhythm and cowboy cards, but this is like rudimentary playing, yes, you can see exactly three or four chords . which you have played on and can deal with this stuff in a few days, yes that absolutely tells you how much that guitar has been played, amazing now that we are on the fender side again, this guitar was a companion or sister guitar to one very rare ems 1235 blonde spanish double neck electronic mandolin that i bought in 1950. i think you have a coaster of those guitars on your coffee table table and guitars in los angeles, this was a accompaniment guitar because it played a double neck. night, that's a lot of work, this was a fender guitar, now we were just talking about how the bodies wear out and how these early maple necks wear out of the fenders.

I've had this guitar for five years. I've only played three or four different songs. on it and everyone has the slide on, so I'm not really bothered by everything that's yours, that's why I got a lot of those clothes and I don't know why I just play it and it's stiff and I love our city and it's a 55 and They have a beautiful grain on the body and, but you know, you can always look at these necks and they'll wear out because that's why they screwed them in, maybe they'll like that idea. okay, so now let's say we put another one on the bakelite, all with no cracks or cracks. hm, you know you have these little grooves in the bakelite that are just from the vibration of the string, you know when you hit it and they just do it and they don't. it cracks in pretty good shape, it won't win the mint blue ribbon but it's pretty good, it's a good example of how much more sound you get from a hardtail with a tremolo because not many people think they want to put a strap on it, they want a bar strong and like hard strategies, they frown, but like all the great strategies I've played, you say, wow, that's a great strategy and before you look down you know nine times out of ten I've been without them.

I love them because they stay. tuned, you know, and most of the time, if I have a tremolo, I just put five springs on it, just lock the rod to make it work and make it non-functional, mainly because everyone wants to catch Van Halen and break it, you know, break. the rod that nice tweed bag you know, that's all you know, but you know, finding a pair like this is great and yeah, it's great. I love this guitar. Are you ready for something? Bass I guess it's okay, let's see. I suposs you are well. I'm not a bassist, but this is the strange thing you notice: there is no contoured p-bass with custom markings and colors and Olympic white custom made for the European market.

You can find most of these in Europe. John and Twistle Play One I've never seen before I've seen some like this and I've seen some maple necks like a maple top all transition logo in 1966 and this came from Europe and I have pictures of the original owner with it and It's just cool and weird, it looks so weird without any cut on the belly or without any outline, so this is what I mean, do you know how many of those there are? He said he wishes it was probably less than 50. That's weird, really weird. cool even though it is without contours and you know that leo probably wouldn't sign it, but at 66 years old it was over and there was so much space for another person around the guard that oh that's crazy and then you know I have labels and the serial number matches the labels and you know, I have pictures of a guy playing it in Europe and you know from the old days that it's worth buying a base for obviously something that's so cool, it's like yeah, I mean something like cool and weird and you know, you know this was released on Joanne Connor's record and and um, you know, and they launch and I like flats on the bases, yeah, I do too because man, I don't like clicks and I like the clicks. booms no clicks yeah I've never seen that one yet one that's very no that's very cool that's very cool very rare very rare wow now these are some of the best things I have here this Rickenbacker sign many of my friends sign collectors you never Look, yes, it's full size, it's actually 365.

That's a full size Rickmacher guitar, it weighs a ton for so many pieces in a place of memories. I've seen it's one of those Rickenbackers and you know, it's like it has a light show guitar and it's cool, yeah, these fenders arefrom the late 70s and early 80s. There are a lot of them out there, but they look cool and you know it's pretty. The book ends, Doctor Hook, the jacket is great. It's a trip that's really cool. I have a small collection of glossy tours. jackets yeah, they're cool, you know they would give them to the team that would get into the band, you know, and it was like it was your badge of honor.

I survived Dr. Hook's world tour in 1978 and I really survived, so I begged this guy. to sell me this he has a guitar from birmingham alabama 11 years old you chased this this tent 11 years old he was in the store lit up making fun of me behind the counter I said come on man what did you have to buy last year? I was the best and the last 2500 dollars because I knew it was one of the most interesting things and again, it's a commercial pattern, it has a handle on the top so I can bring it from the stores to show you what we do, you can put anything there.

So I'm happy he sold it to me because I told him to go to a good house. It will stand out and I'll fix it. You know, he probably bought it at an antique store for five dollars. There is no difference between generation and content. The name I can't figure out what Pud's abbreviation for is Puddley, but he's proud enough to put his name on the damn drum head and announce his band Pud Pulling and his band Croc Case, yeah, clean. I love who I am. I'm not a big sg guys we were talking about here this gets to me yeah I love them I love them in white that's what they look like they're so cool you know and most of the time I have that yeah , teacher or whatever, and um, but yeah.

I found one, you know, I have a couple of these without tremolo and they're great, they're great, they're great power rhythm lead guitars, there are two varieties, this is the 63. In Los Angeles I have a 61 that has a bow, I prefer the ones from arc just because of the way they feel because you can have something about it, but this one is great, 1963, a really clean white, a polaris white and they are just a great powerful rock guitar, it's very simple and it's my favorite sgs. You know, these are the specialties that I love. Sg Space.

It's David St. Hubbard's Spinal Tap rhythm guitar. Hubbard is right and it's just fantastic and also an unbeatable color and it's completely unfair, it's white, which is still like pure white. I have a special red, uh, red at home. I also have a TV in Los Angeles, so that's it. They are great to collect and they are just fun guitars, so like this one, the p90, this is one of several ways that the ip90 is cool in the end, but not least, this is the guitar that we based our new model of epiphone Signature. This is a 1958 Gibson.

Les Paul customized the nine and a half pounder of that and this one here was a contender because it's not new, the neck was too spattered on the back in something like, you know, because it was used and the people sometimes just covered it up and I got into this guitar at the right price to do what I should have done with this guitar to make it a great playable instrument and now some things you want to do with it are way out of date not even cool a lot of expensive very like small and unplayable, so you turn the magnet on the puff to get everything going in the right direction and it sounds like a great strategy, you know, I mean, it sounds like you know wedged in the middle and you have to fret them. having frets I wonder fretless worked at the time for the type of music Les wanted to play really fast without bending it you start bending it it just doesn't work it just doesn't work so this one again sorry the magnet got interesting something interesting about this , I don't know if the camera can oh, that's cool, so these are Epiphone tuners, but if you look at them instead of e, they're just a little bit engraved, just a little line that says g. and it must have been when they ran out of something, they ran out of Grover, they ran out of cables and they put them in there and I've seen some examples, I've seen a couple of 58 or 50, yeah, like it happened in 58. yeah, I saw it, I think the standard was l5 or 175 or something that had exactly the same tuners as a 58.

It defies logic, yes, and it defies what you would read in all the books, but it is original, but the clean, medium, medium front pickup is useful and the main pill just barks and you. I'll just know that I fell in love with it, it's a big black beauty and I just play this thing on the floor and those tuners so a lot of people walk away from the deal because they're like, oh, that's not right or that's not what it's supposed to be be. "That's the best thing, that's the coolest part of the whole guitar, and that, and they actually stay in the tuning because I was worried that, oh my God, these things wouldn't last, they're fine, They're fine and um, and Epiphone did a great job recreating this for the Joe B model and I love the fact that they were like, you know what, just put a little bit in, just put a line in, um, um, oh man, that's a great look, man.

I've been here all day, literally all day. I want to thank you for opening up our house and showing us all this cool stuff. I can't think of a better way to end this day of real guitars and real fun with fake palm trees and a view of the. nashville skyline I'm very lucky to live here and thank you I hope you enjoy the tour when you want to stop by and see what else is new I'm sure something will break and I'll have to replace it but thanks again I'll tell you about that one. man anytime, but thanks for not having any problems with us, hey, until next time, I'm Argenisi for Gibson TV, see you around.

In the next episode of the collection. Peace be with you.