Monthly Motivation-Jaunito Márquez
A friend of mine turned me on to Cuban guitarist Jaunito Márquez a few years ago and lately I’ve been listening to him daily. I really love the sound he gets without using a pick. I’m finding myself not using a pick a lot these days since it seems all of my thousands of picks have apparently grown legs and wondered off.
Here’s one of my favorite tracks from the CD “arrímante pa’ cá” .
Below is an unfortunately out of sync video showing Jaunito’s unique style.
A Strange B-16
My friend Deke Dickerson sent me this photo a few months back and I thought that a couple of you might like it. It’s of the Fender powered Smokey Smith band and I thought the lead guitarist might be Morrie Jones. But, after looking other photos I’m not sure. The interesting thing though is the Bigsby B-16. It’s reversible for both left and right handers. Maybe it’s a one of Bigsby’s prototypes? The tele also looks to have a bridge pickup in the neck position, and a selector switch and another knob up front. I love modified teles.
The Hofner
I just finished the custom pickguard/pickup on this old Hofner. When the client, Benny, brought it to me, I had only seen a handful of Hofner guitars in person and never this model. This guitar was beautifully constructed and had a great sound for chunking out rhythm chords.
Benny wanted to add a pickguard mounted pickup without adding any new holes into the guitar. I only had to drill two small mounting holes, one on the side of the body, for the rear mounting bracket and one on the side of the neck. The remainder of the mounting screws went into existing holes. I had to open up the endpin hole to ½” for the jack. I went with a Charlie Christian looking pickup but constructed more like a P-90 to fit in the limited space.
I hadn’t paid much attention to Hofner guitars in the past but this one really opened my eyes. I’ll be looking for them in the future.
“Out of Phase” Guitar Pickups
I was recently asked why I played so many songs with my guitar pickups wired out of phase on Big Sandy’s “On The Go” LP. The answer to that is… shortly before we recorded the album Robert played me a recording by Louie Innis, ‘’Ain’t Got A Pot To Peel Potatoes In’’. The song features a great takeoff guitar solo with out of phase pickups. It was the first time I can remember hearing that sound. Immediately I put a push/pull tone pot in my Gretsch to have the option of the out of phase sound. I’ve always thought that the guitar player on this Louie Innis recording might be Roy Lanham but I’m only guessing. If anyone knows the session details of this recording please leave a comment.
You can hear the great Louie Innis recording here…
