Serial# 423649

The black beauty here is the Ovation Elite Model 1868 steel string acoustic, the version with the ebony fretboard. I bought this guitar second-hand for $600 in Berkeley, CA, a few days after my wife and I got married on the California coast.

Serial# 85493

Another fine product of the Carvin factory in San Diego.

Vital Statistics:

• Bolt+ with Floyd Rose Trem
• Floyd locking nut
• plain maple cap on Alder body
• Maple neck (tung oil finish)
• No inlays
• Headstock color to match body
• H22N,T pickups
• Center position AP11
• Cream bezels
• On/Off switch for bridge pickup
• Black chrome hardware
• Black plastic knobs (K8, K9)

Body finish: Originally I wanted the off-book “blue denim” stain all over the body. But there is a reason that this finish is “off-book”. It doesn’t always look great. In this case, the end grain really didn’t look so good. Sean at Carvin sent me some photos of the unfinished body with just the blue stain, and we mutually agreed that blue-burst edges would be a good idea. The results were beyond my imagining, and much closer to my original inspiration than I thought I would achieve.

Serial# 99293299

My classical guitar of choice is the http://www.godinguitars.com/godinmultnylonsap.htm. This guitar has wonderful tone, sounds remarkably great unplugged, even though it is only slightly thicker than, say, a Les Paul. The pickup system is phenomenally good, and the built-in 13-pin hex pickup is ready for a Roland guitar synth.

I’ve since gifted this instrument to my nephew, who no doubt will play it more than I recently was.

Serial# 80407210

For a long time this has been my “knock-around” guitar. It didn’t take the trip across the Pacific too well and for a number of years it hang on my wall as a decoration.

Recently I decided to experiment and turn it into a fretless nylon string guitar. I documented that process here.

I’ve strung it with Tomastik-Infield KR116 strings, and it is a lot of fun to play.

Here’s a little idea I started working out over the next few days:

Two takes, rhythm panned left and lead panned right. The GSP21 does the reverb, and the Line 6 POD 2.0 adds a little grit, gain, and delay to the lead.

Serial# F017776

My main guitar is an Ibanez 540s. This is the original slim sculpted body version in Black Cherry, with Floyd-Rose trem. I bought it in 1988 I think. A friend of mine – a bass player no less – said that one should never let the quality of your instruments hold you back. I sold him the guitar that until then I had been playing (if I recall correctly it was one that I had basically built out of spare parts) and went shopping. It has a seriously good neck.

It still has the original F2 and C2 pickups and frankly I think they get better with age.