Category: Guitar Stuff

This is my new guitar in progress. Two slabs of mahogany for the body. There’s still a ways to go.

This is my DIY at-home noise maker. It has a Dumble ODS preamp and a Fender Champ power amp. At just a few watts it’s a great amp for practicing at home. The speaker cab is a clone of a Raezer’s Edge jazz cab. It’s a ported cab with a 300 watt 10″ speaker. It sounds really good with this amp. Fun toys.

I recently had a chance to attend a performance by a group called Angel Pie (formerly Angel Fish before the departure of their bass player). I previously had the pleasure of seeing and playing with singer Mari and guitarist Aika at jam sessions around Tokyo, but this was the first time for me to hear their band.

Singer Mari is a diminutive girl with a big voice, easily handling everything from rock to funk to blues. In addition to her vocal skills, I was very impressed with the fact that she sang everything in English with nearly perfect pronunciation, a rare treat for me in a Japanese singer.

I have been a fan of Aika for some time now. I have seen her frequently and had a few chances to play with her at jam sessions. She never fails to impress me, but I was even more impressed to see how she handled the various styles of music, easily switching from rock to country-ish, to blues, with an occasional taste of jazz mixed in. A very talented guitarist and, I was surprised to learn, a good vocalist too. I just bought Aika’s CD “Orange Forest” and I’m enjoying it as well.

I’ll add more to this later, but I wanted to get a few notes and the pictures on my blog while the show is still fresh in my mind.

My 350 is by far the best guitar I have ever owned and/or played. The quality of the old Gibson’s is simply amazing.

From left to right: 1953 ES-350, 1950 ES-175 and 1950 ES-125.

These are my two blonde bombshells. On the left is my 1953 Gibson ES-350 and on the right is my 1954 Harmony H62.

This is a shot of me playing with my friend Spider Tetsu and his band The Swinging Red Wagons. Spider and I were both playing old Harmony H62’s.

I went to see Travis Carlton with Michael Landau at the Cotton Club in Tokyo. It was a great show, and in addition to hanging out with the band after the show, I also got to see the new Michael Landau signature Strat from the Fender Custom Shop one day before its official introduction. In this picture is Karen Landau (Michael’s wife), Michael Landau, me and Travis Carlton.

The first and last guitars I played in bands when I was still living in Vermont.

This is my heavily modified Eastwood reissue of the Airline H44. It has a new nut, frets, bridge, pickguard, pickups, pots and switch. Because of its small size and light weight, it has become my main guitar. All work was done by Tokyo genius luthier Shin Ichikawa.