I don’t always get as much time to play as I would like now that I’m a family man. My 2 year old daughter demands a lot of my time and my wife spends a lot of time alone with her and, by the time I get home from work, she needs a break and some adult conversation and some down time. After the munchkin goes to bed, I often find myself needing some quiet time with my wife. That’s especially true as of late.
My wife and I have been having problems for awhile and things didn’t look good. Recently, we had it out and realized we had been having a SEVERE communication breakdown as well as a complete miscommunication. This brought about an “ah ha!” moment and we both decided that we were willing to do the work to make things better. While this a very good thing and something that I am definitely excited and happy about, it does reduce the amount of time I am willing to be away from her and the little one. So, when she decides to take the munchkin to see her parents and spend the night, I take it as a perfect opportunity to sit down with a hot rod guitar, an empty house and a screaming amp. Tonight was one of those nights.
I’ve always been a fan of Fender guitars, primarily Stratocasters, from a very early age. I was a child of the 80’s and, for a 13 year old kid aspiring to be a guitar god, that meant metal and, more specifically, hyper technical metal, and that meant Malmsteen…Yngwie Malmsteen. For those of you that aren’t familiar with the Swedish shred legend that is Yngwie (pronounced Ing-Vay), he is one of the most flamboyant, showiest, over the top, arrogant and outright in-your-face guitarists to ever overdrive a ridiculous number of Marshall 50 watt amps in history. He is also one of the most technically adept, accurate, well versed and FASTEST guitarists in history. And, guess what, he played Fender strats. After hearing what that man could do with a strat, I was hooked. I begged my parents, who were divorced, to both go in on half to buy me a white Fender strat like that one that Yngwie played. It was a Squier, but it was a strat and I loved it.
A couple of years later, I learned about Stevie Ray Vaughan. He was a god. He had guts and feeling. His music spoke to my maudlin, teenage soul. And nothing defined his sound more than my beloved Fender strats. From that moment on, I was a blues man. I could play his songs. I could learn his solos. His style seemed to make sense to me. To this day, Stevie’s influence can be heard in my playing. His techniques, his sounds, his style just seemed to blend into mine so easily. But, I could never figure out why my strat just never sounded like his. It took me 15 years to figure out why.
I’ve always worked on my own guitars. From the very first pickup swap to the very latest…well…pickup swap. And that’s where the problem was. I was a teenager with a soldering iron and no experience. Can you see where I’m going with this? It’s amazing what heat can do to electronics. And, when you’re an un-experienced kid trying to install a new Dimarzio HS-3 into your strat because that’s the pickup that Yngwie plays and you hold the soldering iron on the wires too long because you don’t know what you’re doing, bad things start to happen. I’m proud to say that I do, now, know how to effectively use a soldering iron and I can, effectively, replace a pickup without melting the strings off the guitar and causing the smoke alarms to go off (Yes, I have actually had to explain the smoke alarms because of a bad solder job, but that was a long time ago…and the therapy is going well.) Since those dark days and that failed HS-3 replacement (I actually burned out 2 of them that I saved up for for months to put in at the bridge and the neck), I have learned how to solder effectively and safely, do full setups, re-level fretboards and fully refinish guitars. I’ve come along way, baby.
What does all of this have to do with wanting to play my guitar all night while my wife is visiting my in-laws? Recently, I traded a guitar I rarely played to my old guitar teacher, Jeff Loven. Jeff is a monster guitar player and a consummate entertainer. So much so that my wife and I hired him to be the music at our wedding reception. He also plays a Fender Hot Rod Reissue strat with a Floyd Rose that’s “Yngwie” white with Dimarzio pickups. He has about 10 of them in different colors. So, when I got the chance to trade for one of them, I jumped at the chance. I got to sit around trying them all out until I settled on this…
That guitar brought me back to Fender. I started getting rid of my ”non-Fender” guitars (I’m still holding on to the Squiers as well. They’re made by Fender so they’re good. Heheh) and went back to my roots.
Which brings us to my latest (and, if you ask my wife, final) guitar acquisition. I’ve been going back to my shred roots over the last few years and I reintroduced myself to Paul Gilbert. PG, recently, released his first ever signature Dimarzio pickups called the Injectors. They’re based off of Dimarzios newer Area ’67 noiseless pickups. So, I decided I wanted a full set. So, I bought them. But I had no guitar to put them in because I had finally gotten my strats setup with interesting pickup configs and setups. I decided to trade an Epiphone guitar I had that I never played for a new (well, new to me) strat to put the Injectors in. I ended up finding a beautiful ’99 strat with a black finish and a blonde (maple) neck. It’s the only hot blonde that my wife will let me put my hands on besides her.
I got the new strat all setup and fine tuned and installed the new pickups. Everything was ready to go. The action is perfect. The intonation is perfect. The timing was perfect. Tonight was the night to take her out for a spin…
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