The Edge's 1976 Gibson Explorer

The Explorer is not the most popular guitar that Gibson ever produced. It is eclipsed by models such as the Les Paul, the SG, and even the Flying V. However, what makes the guitar especially unique is the fact that when people conjure up images of it in their mind, they usually only think of it in the hands of one individual, and that person is David Evans, better known to the world as The Edge, lead guitarist for the Irish rock group U2.

 

The Explorer and its sister model the Flying V, was Gibson's attempt to introduce an eye-catching futuristic type of instrument into their line. To say that the effort was a flop is a huge understatement. During their first two years of production in 1958 and 1959, Gibson only managed to sell less than fifty of the so-called Korina Explorers. They were so-named due to the Korina type wood used in the body. Today these guitars are extremely rare and command astronomical prices in the vintage guitar market. Vintage Guitar Magazine has priced these guitars between $250,000 and $310,000.

After five years, Gibson decided to cut their losses with the failed line and in 1963, the last of the original line of Explorers left the Gibson factory. The most notable player of Gibson Explorers, in fact probably the only notable player of initial run Explorers was Eric Clapton who used a 1958 Explorer while recording his albums first solo albums Eric Clapton and 461 Ocean Boulevard. The line remained dormant until 1976, when Gibson, hoping to capitalize on the guitar's now legendary status, decided to re-issue the instrument in a second line.

In 1978, a seventeen year old Irishman went on a vacation to New York City with his family. He had just recently joined a new music group and on the trip had his eyes open for any guitar stores in the city where he might acquire a new instrument with which to play in the band. He had a certain guitar in mind, but upon entering Stuyvesant Music Inc he happened upon something that caught his eye, "I just picked it up in the store and it felt so great, this is it. I actually went in to buy, I think I was going to buy a Les Paul, but I just fell in love with this guitar."

It was of course a second run model 1976 Gibson Explorer, and the young man was none other than The Edge. Once he played it, he knew he had to have it, and though it cost him a small fortune $248.40, he gladly plunked it down on the counter and made his way out of the store. Once he made it back to Ireland, his bandmates were a bit bewildered by the site of his latest acquisition as he was to recall, " I brought it back and I was slightly like...it's a little strange looking...are the guys in the band gonna look at it and go 'what?'...there's a few strange looks for the first day, but everyone just loved the sound of it. I think it became like a signature look, no one else was playing Explorers at that point, and so quite soon it became the thing we were famous for. Apart from a few other things obviously."

From 1978 on, The Edge used the Explorer on every studio recording the U2 did, and it The Edge used it for nearly every tour the band embarked upon. After so much use, the guitar obviously has its share of wear and tear as The Edge was to later state, "It's had a few accidents over the years. This happened in Radio City about the mid eighties. We were playing a show and the bouncers were particularly heavy in the venue, and there were some kids in the front getting pummeled. So I actually threw the guitar off, sort of to intervene, and stopped it. Bono stopped the show and we got it sorted out, but I came back, picked the guitar up and the head was hanging off. It was totally broken...We got it repaired. I'm not sure it has affected the sound, I couldn't tell the difference when I got it back."

As the years wore on, and the guitar's value increased - not just in dollars but also in terms of sentimental attachment - The Edge decided to leave the instrument behind when he went on out on tour. "We finally retired it." says The Edge's guitar tech Dallas Schoo. "It's such an important guitar for recording that I finally convinced him to leave it home. Nothing serious ever happened to it, but it's spent years in the sun, getting rained on - outdoor shows do that. I wanted to nip things in the bud while I could."

Finding a replacement for The Edge's beloved Explorer was no easy task however as Schoo would recall, "The right ones are hard to find because Gibson had two different Explorers in production that year. The ones that were produced from June through December had a thin neck, but the models that were produced during the first part of that year had a thick baseball bat neck. Those are the ones Edge prefers. Gibson didn't make many of them, only about 1800 of them or so, and people hang on to them."

In 2008, The Edge, ever the philanthropist, decided to put up his Gibson Explorer up for auction to benefit Music Rising, a non-profit organization that helped to replace damaged or destroyed instruments in the wake of the devastating Hurricane Katrina. The sale ultimately netted $240,000 far exceeding the pre-auction estimate price of $80,000. The Edge was to remark of the sale, "No one could ever come close to repaying the debt to those who have established this form of music that we all take totally for granted, this hybrid of European melody and African-American rhythm that's given us jazz and R&B and rock 'n' roll," said the Edge. "There's something powerful about musicians giving instruments they own to an auction to aid musicians who are going through a particularly difficult time."

There is something to be said for someone who would part with something so clearly dear to them for the betterment of so many hundreds of people. Ultimately, guitars are just material possessions, and the fact that The Edge would decide to recognize this fact and do something truly good with it should be a lesson to us all.

Despite no longer owning his first and most recognized Explorer, The Edge continues to play them to this day, and in people's minds around the world to this day, when they think of either the guitar or the player, they are unable to divorce the one from the other.

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Bruce Springsteen "Born to Run" Fender Esquire

An image can be a powerful thing. Of the many hundreds of thousands of images that adorn the various album covers throughout history I think it is fair to say that the image on the cover of Bruce Springsteen's legendary album "Born to Run" is one of the most indelible of all time. Bruce with a half smile leaning against Saxophonist Clarence Clemons with a well worn Fender Esquire slung across his torso. To this day it is impossible to think of "The Boss" without that beloved guitar by his side.

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The earliest known owner of Bruce's famous Esquire was a recording studio in New York City (presumed to be Colombia Records) during the 1960's. At some point the studio then sold the guitar to a New Jersey based luthier named Phil Petillo at a liquidation sale. When Petillo purchased the guitar, it had already been outfitted with four pickups and had a second input jack installed and it took him a bit of time for him to restore it to good working order after years of abuse in the studio. It was from Phil Petillo in the early 1970's that Bruce acquired the instrument, and as the luthier was to later recall,"The Fender Esquire guitar he plays he [Springsteen] bought from me for $180."

One of the many mysteries that swirl around this guitar is when exactly did "The Boss" get his hands on one. Petillo has said it was sometime around 1969 or 1970, but this was purely from his own recollection, and he was never able to produce any sort of receipt to verify the sale. However, from photographs from Springsteen during that period it is clear that the instrument he was playing was a yellow Gibson Les Paul that he finished himself while working at a surf shop. It wasn't until around 1972 that Bruce was first photographed with the famed Esquire. Thus one can reasonably deduce it was during that year that Springsteen bought it from Petillo.

Bruce with the Esquire in 1973

Another big mystery about the guitar is...what is it really? Bruce Springsteen himself has been on record as stating that the guitar is a Telecaster body with an Esquire neck, but then again he might be only referring to the fact that the body was styled as a Tele with two pickups rather than just the one that came equipped on an Esquire. Esquire's were routed for two pickups and Phil Petillo has stated that when he received the instrument it had already had a very large route and came with a neck pickup already in place. It really is impossible to say without any dispute what the guitar really is. At the end of the day it has been so modified and changed over the years I think this a question that will just have to remain unanswered.

Another unanswerable question is, what year was this guitar made? The body is made of ash, which means that it was manufactured prior to 1959 and most probably was made around 1953 or 1954. When it comes to the neck, the details get a little murkier. It is generally accepted that the neck was made somewhere between after that period. The neck has a soft v-shaped profile that Fender crafted for their necks around 1955 and 1957. Thus it has been generally accepted that the body is older than the neck and that it was installed at some later point.

The serial number on the guitar famously carries an asterisk which could have been applied in the Fender factory or just as easily after the fact by the recording company. What is known is that Fender would sometimes make a neck and not actually attach it to a body for upwards of a year. Additionally they might manufacture a guitar completely, apply the serial number and not ship the instrument for some time. This is another mystery that will just have to remain unsolved.

Bruce's Famed Esquire (The Later Years)

After Bruce bought the instrument from Phil Petillo he used it consistently as his number one live and studio guitar almost exclusively. Additionally, he continued to have all work done on the guitar to be completed almost exclusively by Petillo. Over the years, Petillo has installed his own hot-wound custom pickups into it, re-freted it completely a number of times with his own patented fret wires, and installed his own custom string-tree on the headstock. Bruce particularly loves the feel of the neck on the Esquire and has subsequently asked Petillo to shape all his Tele necks to match the profile of this guitar.

Petillo also later added a six saddle bridge to the guitar in later years, replacing the originally stamped three saddle bridge. When it comes to the pickguard, it is generally accepted that it has been swapped out numerous times time during its life. On the cover of Born to Run, the guitar has a seven screw black pickguard with a small sticker on it. As is well known, these guitars were originally manufactured and installed with only five screws. On the cover of the Human Touch album, the pickguard is missing the sticker and is white lined. It is also possible that the guitar may have even began its existence as a solid white pickguard model.

From April 2009 to February 2011 the guitar was on display at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio as part of their temporary exhibit, "From Asbury Park to The Promised Land: The Life and Music of Bruce Springsteen". Visitors were offered an unprecedented closeup view of this world famous instrument (full disclosure, I was one of those visitors, and yes it was awesome).

There are very few artists who have attained the level and success of Bruce Springsteen. He is part of a pantheon of rock and rollers like Paul McCartney, Bono, or Mick Jagger who can be instantly recognized anywhere around the world. When one thinks of Bruce Springsteen, the image that usually gets conjured in one's head is that of him onstage, sweating buckets, veins popping, and trusty Fender Esquire slung low around his waist.

An image can be a powerful thing.

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Willie Nelson's 1969 Martin N-20 "Trigger"

Willie Nelson is a Country music superstar and one of the progenitors alongside Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings of the "Outlaw" Country genre and image. For most of Willie's professional career he has played one guitar as his main instrument of choice; a 1969 Martin N-20 that he dubbed "Trigger"

Willie and Trigger in the Early Days

In 1969 Willie Nelson was playing a show in Helotes, Texas. After the show was over he left his guitar, a Baldwin, on the ground and it was stepped on by a drunken concertgoer. Willie took his broken guitar to Shot Jackson, a repairman in Nashville to see if he could restore the instrument and make it playable again. Unfortunately, Jackson recognized right away the the damage was too severe and that any work he would do would be futile. Needless to say Willie felt a bit despondent, so Jackson offered to sell him a 1969 Martin N-20 Classical Guitar for $750 to which Willie assented. Shortly thereafter he named the instrument "Trigger" after the Roy Roger's horse. Nelson would have Jackson install a Baldwin pickup in his new guitar.

The Martin N-20 Classical Acoustic Guitar was not exactly a hot seller, Martin only made 1,101 of them in 1969. It came with a spruce top with Brazilian rosewood back and sides and had a 12/18-fret unbound ebony fingerboard with no inlays, slotted headstock with decal logo, three-per-side open-style tuners with pearloid buttons, rosewood tied bridge and the neck was 25.4 inches in scale.

Willie has singled out "Trigger" as being one of the key components to his unique sound, "One of the secrets to my sound is almost beyond explanation. My battered old Martin guitar, Trigger, has the greatest tone I’ve ever heard from a guitar [...] If I picked up the finest guitar made this year and tried to play my solos exactly the way you heard them on the radio or even at last night’s show, I’d always be a copy of myself and we’d all end up bored. But if I play an instrument that is now a part of me, and do it according to the way that feels right for me [...] I’ll always be an original".

 "Trigger" is easily one of Willie's most prized possessions and he has gone to great lengths to make sure it never leaves his side. Just a year after he bought it, Nelson's ranch caught fire and he made sure to rescue this guitar from the flames while leaving most of the rest of his possessions to burn.  In 1991, while Willie was under hear from IRS for tax evasion, he became quite concerned that the government would confiscate his old friend. Hoping to head them off Nelson asked his daughter, Lana, to take the "Trigger" from the studio before any IRS agent got there, and bring it to his home in Maui. After making sure it was secure, he then gave it to his manager who then hid the guitar until his debt was paid in 1993.

"Trigger"

 One of the more unique things about this guitar is the wide array of signatures that adorn it's body. The first signature on the guitar was made by Leon Russell. Russell had asked Willie to sign his guitar and when he was about to sign it with a marker, Russell asked him if he could scratch his name in the wood instead. He told Willie that this would make the guitar far more valuable in the future. The request piqued Willie's interest, and so he asked Russell to sign "Trigger" in return. Since that first signature, "Trigger" has been signed by hundreds of people ranging from athletes to fellow musicians, friends and business associates.

Another thing about "Trigger" that makes the guitar stand out at first viewing is it's battered condition, along with a gaping hole just beneath the sound-hole. After over forty years of playing, the guitar has certainly seen better days, and the wear and tear inflicted upon it is physically evident. "Trigger" is a classical guitar, meaning it was meant to be finger-picked and thus did not come equipped with a pickguard. Nelson however plays his guitar with a pick, and after years of doing so, eventually a large hole was worn into the body.

Ultimately few other guitar players on the planet have come to become so closely identified with an instrument as Willie Nelson and "Trigger". Nelson has gone on record as saying, "When Trigger goes, I'll quit." After many decades spent together playing music, the guitar and the player have an almost shared identity, they are one and inseparable.

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Keith Richards 1959 Gibson Les Paul

Keith Richards is most famously known for playing Fender Telecasters, however in the early years of The Rolling Stones, one of his main instruments was a Sunburst 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard.

The guitar pictured above held by Keith Richards is a 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard; The Holy Grail of electric guitars. The instrument was originally purchased in March 1961 from Farmers Music Store in Luton, United Kingdom, by John Bowen the guitarist for Mike Dean and the Kinsman. At some point Bowen had a Bigsby Vibrato fitted and installed on the guitar at the famous Selmer's Guitar Shop in London. Eventually, he traded in the Les Paul at Selmer's for a Gretsch Country Gentleman in late 1962; It was there that it stumbled into the hands of Keith Richards.

Keith's Les Paul would go on to be his main guitar of choice in the early years of The Rolling Stones, taking it with him on the band's famed tour of The United States in 1964. Millions of audiences across America were introduced to Keith and his Lester when they made their debut performance on The Ed Sullivan Show. Keith also used the guitar to record some of The Stones earliest hits including,  “Little Red Rooster,” “Time is on My Side,” “The Last Time,” “Get Off My Cloud,” “Let’s Spend the Night Together” and most famously, "Satisfaction".

Keith wasn't one to be stingy with his instruments and would often loan his Les Paul out to several of his cohorts. It is known that Jimmy Page used it on at least one mid-’60s recording sessions, and Eric Clapton used the guitar in 1966 with Cream at the Windsor Jazz & Blues Festival. Keith used his Les Paul from 1964 until 1967 when sold the guitar to his future Rolling Stones bandmate Mick Taylor.  Taylor had replaced Peter Green in John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers.

Ultimately, Keith and the Les Paul would be reunited in a way just a little under two years later when Mick Taylor was chosen to succeed Brian Jones as the second guitarist in The Rolling Stones. Mick Taylor was often seen playing the instrument at various Rolling Stones concerts, and can be seen with both Keith and Mick playing it on the film of the band at the infamous Altamont Speedway in 1969, "Gimme Shelter".

Mick Taylor with the "Keith Burst"

At some point in 1971 under circumstances that aren't exactly clear to this day, the guitar was stolen. There are many stories that swirl around what happened to the guitar including that it was stolen at The Marquee Club in London, or in Nellcote, France while the band was recording the album "Exile on Main Street". Whatever happened to it, it next popped up in the hands of Cosmo Verrico, the guitarist of the group The Heavy Metal Kids.  Verrico owned the guitar until 1974, when he sold the guitar to Bernie Marsden of Whitesnake. Bernie then held onto the instrument for a little over a week before basically flipping it to Mike Jopp a for a cool £50 profit.

Mike Jopp owned the guitar from 1974 until 2003 when he decided to finally part ways with it and sold it to a private unnamed investor who himself auctioned it off a year later through Christie's in New York City. The guitar then only stayed off the market for a mere two years before it was again sold to a private collector for a reported $1,000,000.

In terms of history this is one of the most significant guitars that has ever been played. As I've stated above, The 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard is considered to be the Holy Grail of solid-body electric guitars. The reason for their notoriety is due to how many of the greatest guitar players of all time chose to take one up as their main instrument of choice. Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, Duane Allman, Gary Rossington, and on and on. However, it might have been that none of them would have even considered using one if they hadn't been exposed to it's tonal abilities through the exposure it received in the hands of Keith Richards. 

I think it can be fairly stated that the "Keith Burst" Gibson Les Paul could be called the Grandaddy of all The Bursts.

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Interview With Guitar Tech Extraordinaire Rene Martinez

Rene Martinez

Rene Martinez has led a life that many people only dream of. He has worked with some of the greatest guitar players the world has ever known from Stevie Ray Vaughan to John Mayer, from Prince to Carlos Santana, and many many more. In addition he also has his own line of strings and other guitar repair equipment that is for sale on his website, Texas Guitar Whiz. Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down and talk with Mr. Martinez about his life, the guitarists he's worked with and the guitars he's worked on.

IA: How old were you when you started playing guitar?

RM: I was about nine years old when I started playing guitar. At the time I had no reason to even think about why I wanted to play guitar other than when I heard my father play, that’s where it comes from. He was always coming home from work and he would sit down and relax, then play the guitar and sing some songs. All he ever played play were some Mexican Rancheras or things like that; he enjoyed to calm himself down and enjoy his evening before bedtime and everything. So just out of the blue one night with my brothers,  his playing caught my ear for whatever reason it was and I said, “I’m gonna go listen to Dad,” and I went over there to listen to him and looked at his fingers on the guitar and asked him after he finished one of his songs, “How do you do that? How do you make those things on the guitar?” and that was my first guitar lesson.

He showed me three major chords, it was C, F Major and G Major and these were barre chords. It wasn’t like, here practice this until your fingers get strong and we’ll show you a barre chord, it was just straight out, here, here, here and here. And I did that and that evening getting close to bedtime, cause we had to shut the lights out at around ten o’clock to get ready for school the next day or work, my mom came in and said it was time to go to bed, and my dad said, “We’ll pick this up tomorrow.” And I got the guitar after everyone went to bed, I went out to the living room and got it and took it to my bedroom and I sat there and I learned those three chords before I went to sleep, and I was kind of excited about it. It was just one of those things, one of those magical things that happens to you when you learn how to play guitar. So I had them all learned and I went to bed.  Woke up extra early the next morning and I said, “Dad, look I gotta show you, I can play these chords.” He was rather impressed and said, “Wow! That’s great.” That was the beginning of the whole thing.

IA: You began your career working on guitar with Charley Wirz at Charley’s Guitar Shop in Dallas, how did you get that job, and what was it like working for Charley?

RM: Well, prior to that I got my start working on guitars at another store before Charley’s Guitar Shop. My work was painting cars, I had learned by helping my Dad. His business was body and fender repair and he needed help while I was in High School so I would go over there and help him out and I learned and my other brothers did as well. They didn’t get into it, they didn’t like it so, but I stayed with it because I enjoyed working with my hands – I always have – and I went and got a chance to earn some extra cash and he was paying for my school, private school. I was also taking guitar lessons at the time…and at the guitar shop I was taking lessons at my teacher asked me if I would paint his car, and I did.

I delivered it and this violin maker happened to be in the store when I delivered the car and said, “yeah, your teacher is giving a lesson right now, he’ll be right out.” He went out and took a look at my paint job and said, “Man, this is great, have you ever thought about re-finishing instruments?” and I said, “No, how do you do that?” so he says, “The same way you do cars.” So I said, bye to cars and hello to guitars and that’s how I got into it. At the time it was about two or three years before I met Charley Wirz and I just left this store, I was going to go out and venture on my own, repairing on my own and I got a phone call from Charley and he asked me if I knew anything about a certain guitar and came over and that’s how we met. So he says, “I’m looking for a full-time repairman,” and that was the beginning of working at Charley’s Guitar Shop.

Charley's Guitar Shop

IA: When did you first meet Stevie Ray Vaughan?

RM: Stevie Ray Vaughan I met around 1983. I met his brother first, Jimmy Vaughan he came into the shop and they were playing locally around Dallas, Texas. I met him and he told Charley about Stevie, and Charley heard about Stevie or knew about Stevie, this up and young guy playing great guitar. Anyway, he wound up meeting Stevie Ray Vaughan, and after that Stevie came into the shop and that’s how we met. I would guess that was around ’83, ’82 or ’83 when I met Stevie Ray Vaughan, but I didn’t do any guitar work for him at that particular moment. He was taking his guitars to a lot of places, I can’t tell you where, but he was travelling and he’d have guitar work done here and there and I’m sure at home in Austin, but he never really told me.

One day he came up to get his guitar setup. He wanted to try me out and see what was going on and he brought a guitar to setup and he said, “Man, I need some help with this one, I just can’t get it to play the way I want it to,” and I said, “Sure.” So, I started setting it up and I would do my thing to it and I’d go out there and see how he liked it. He kept asking for little changes here and there, “Can you do this to it? Can you do that to it?” and I said, “Sure.” So I’d take it back and kept doing my thing until he said, “Man, that’s exactly what I want. Thank you for taking the time,” and he said it like I was going back and forth so many times, he said it to be almost  appologetic for being so picky. I was like, “Well, this is what I do. I do guitar setup for you, not for me.” And he said, “Well, thank you for taking the time, again.” He really liked that. I found that kinda like, “Huh, wow, this guy really likes the fact that you would take a little more time.” I thought, well that’s strange. I just do what I do. That’s how we started and he kept bringing guitars in to get worked on, re-frets, fret dresses, nuts, and things like that. That’s how we met.

Stevie Ray Vaughan

IA: When did you go out on the road with him?

RM: This wa in 1985. He and Charley had this repore with each other and they got along. We made him a guitar in ’84. I did the paintjob, re-fretted the guitar  and used  jumbo frets. Charley put all the guts together and he presented him this guitar. It was a flip-flop/blue pearl color. It was white but if you moved the guitar with the light it would get kinda blue. Charley did all the electronics. Stevie was really keen with Charley at the time, and he and I were still getting to know each other.

Then Charley gave him the guitar, this was in ’84.  In ’85, Charley passed and I started to get a lot of visits from Stevie Ray Vaughan that particular year. He’d come over, he was recording in Dallas, and he’d come over to the shop and he’d buy a guitar, he’d have a guitar setup or he’d just come over to hang out for a few minutes. Then I was doing a moonlighting job after six o’clock when the store was closed. I was playing guitar at a local hotel, picking up some extra cash, and playing just because I loved to play. I play flamenco classical guitar, I don’t play electric guitar and that’s what I did. I’d play from seven o’clock at night to nine o’clock and one day he just showed up. He just came out there from out in the blue. There he was out there in the lobby having a drink, I looked up and there he was. I was really surprised; and I thought, “Golly, look who’s here.”

So I took a quick break because he was there just wanting to say hi, and he said, “Hey, what are you doing later on when you get done?” I said, “I’m gonna go home, that’s it after this is done.” He said, “Can you come by and stop by the studio,” and I did. I went to the studio when I was done and he was just doing stuff and time was going by and I said, “Look, I gotta go. I gotta get up early, it’s already midnight.” He said, “Can you stick around a little longer?” I said, “Well, maybe a few more minutes, but I really do have to go to work tomorrow.” He said, “Well, hold on, I need to talk to you, have you ever thought about going out on the road? “I said, “For what?” It was just right over my head, I didn’t even know what he was getting at. So he said, “Well to go to work on the road for me,” and I went, “Oh…to do what?” and he goes, “To setup and maintain my guitars.” I said, “That’s it?” and he says, “That’s it. I don’t want you to lift any cases; I don't want you to do any hard work. Your hands are too valuable, but this is what I need, and I need somebody like you.”

So we did a business deal, and I just said, “Well, I don’t know. I gotta go home and think about it,” and I did. I didn’t make my decision until a month or so later because at first I said, “I can’t do this, I got a guitar shop to run.” Then somebody suggested, “You should at least try it for a little while. You can always go back to the guitar shop.” I didn’t think about it like that, so I said, “Okay, I’ll do that.” So I called Stevie up and said, “Okay, I’ll do it.” My first show was in May of 1985. It was in New Orleans. I did it, and came back home and I’ve been there ever since. I didn’t leave, I stayed with it.

IA: Stevie was pretty wild in a live setting. How difficult was it to maintain his guitars?

RM: Well he was like any other guitar player in my book except that he was much more aggressive with his guitar. He would wear out his frets; he could even wear out a bone nut ya know? He didn’t have a lot of bone nuts on his guitars and to me they were the best sounding. Every time I’d recommend something to him for better tone, he was just like all for it. But he was also testing to see, just because I said it, he wasn’t quite sure if it would work or not, but every time I said something and did it, he could actually hear what was going on and he’d go, “Man, you really know your guitars!” I said, “Well, I play guitar and this is what I have on my guitars acoustically and it’d have to work for electric guitars.” So that’s why I’d recommend this or that. So he really grabbed a hold of my knowledge about instruments because I could repair things and they did make a difference in making the guitar play easier and sound better. So that’s how that worked.

I just kept throwing out stuff to him and I would have to do repair work because he was aggressive with the guitar. I would have to re-fret his guitars on the road, because I didn’t have time to go home and refret his guitars. So I took everything with me, all my re-fretting tools, nuts, you name it and I’d literally set up shop, but I could not repair in a road situation. I’d have to wait for a day off to come and on my day off at the hotel I’d be there all day long re-fretting a guitar or making a new nut and setting it up for him and everything and having it ready for him the next day. He got used to it [laughs] and he started expecting repairs done quickly because I was quick! That was my fault, and I had to say, “No, I need time, this takes a lot of work.” He respected that too. He respected the point that I could come back and go, “No we can’t do this. I have to do it like this.” He would just go, “Okay, that’s fine. I understand. It is your day off, and I’m making you work on your day off.”

IA: Stevie’s favorite guitar was his famous “Number One” Fender Stratocaster. He played it for most of his career. Can you tell us a bit about that instrument and what made it so special?

RM: Well, I just think he really liked the way this guitar sounded to him and how it felt to him when he first saw it. He said he saw it up on the guitar rack in a store in Austin and could just tell and feel it was something that he would like to play and he asked to hold it and play it and he did and wanted it. He knew this was the guitar, and I’m sure when he plugged it in, he heard it and liked what it sounded like. I think at the time he couldn’t afford the guitar and this was before all this, so he had it a while, and I think his wife and some friends went and bought it for him for his birthday after they found out about it because I think he had been talking about it quite a bit. That’s how he got a hold of that guitar. He said it was his first wife, and it never left him.

It was a good sounding guitar. It was a guitar that would not go down. It wouldn’t die; it wouldn’t break or fall apart. Although he did manage to crack the headstock more than once. What he would do, he would put it down on the ground and he would put his toes down on the lower bout and then he’d bend over and grab the neck of the guitar and then just bring it up where it was standing up; did stuff like that. But he never really stood on it and lifted the neck. That would break the guitar for sure. You know, he was not an idiot, but he made situations look like they were pretty intense and throwing it down on the ground, that’s a little intense. I would have to be the one to go back and fix things if something was broken. I did many a re-fret on that guitar on that guitar.

SRV's Number One

IA: What was the purpose of the left-handed vibrato arm on that guitar?

RM: I don't know. I wasn’t there when that happened, that’s the way the guitar was when it was sent to me, brought to me, that’s the way I looked at it. I was never more curious about that situation other than he did something to it and that’s the way he wanted it and that was it. I never asked him. I guess I could have surmised some answers in my head on why he did it that way, but it didn’t make any never mind to me. It was his thing. I was more interested in how it operated, why it wasn’t working if it didn’t, and how to fix what I had to fix when I was presented the problem of something’s wrong with it. I can tell you those things; I know exactly what I did to it even to this day.

IA: What sort of things did you do to it?

RM: Well, he wore the frets out like I said; he wore out the nuts a lot as well and the tremolo blocks in them I’d have to change out. I mean he had big strings on there and things would get loose on it. Saddles I’d have to replace every now and then because he would wear those out as well, mostly from sweat. Things would get really sweaty and rusty and I’d have to replace the height screws on them and adjust his screws; go back and forth for strobing those things. I’d have to replace the springs because they would get rusty. It was just one of those situations where I would be the guy who maintained his guitar in any way, shape or form.

This guitar came with chrome or nickel parts on it at the time so when we were in California, I had a family member who worked for Fender and we were in contact with each other before that and during that. So in L.A. I gave him a call because we were playing there. I called him up and said hello; it was just a hello call and I finally just said, “Can you get a hold of parts for a Strat?” He said, “Yeah, what do you want?” I said, “I would love to get a whole bunch of gold parts and dress this thing up.” That’s the kind of guy I was with Stevie because he was kind of a flashy guy. He wore clothes like he did, and not to impress anybody, that’s just what he liked. So I thought it’d be kinda nice to put some gold parts on here.

I think he came and brought me the next day all the parts, the left handed tremolo unit and those things were rare at that time and harder to find. But he brought me a left-handed bridge, a tremolo arm, the saddles, the jack plate, the strap buttons, and these tuning machines he brought to me had pearloid buttons on it and gold-plated. I thought, “Wow, this is the cat’s meow!” I was just in love with it and I said thank you to him, and he didn’t even charge me for them, he just said, “Nah, I already talked to them, they said it was fine, you can just have ‘em.” So I took them with me, went back to the hotel and went into the lounge area and he [Stevie] was there and he looked at me and said,  “Hi, what’s been going on? You been having a good day off?” I said, “Yeah, lookee here, look at what I got.” I opened up the package and showed him all the parts and he was like, “Wow! What are you gonna do with that?” I said, “I’m gonna put them on Number One.” He just went, “Are you kidding me?” I said, “No”. I asked Stevie, do you think this would be cool enough?” and he just gave me a hug. He didn’t even have to say yes. He said, “You have complete control. You do whatever you want to do.” I thought, “Cool, I think this will make it look good,” and that’s how that happened, that’s how the gold parts ended up on that guitar. So that’s my fault.

IA: There has been a lot of debate over whether that guitar is a 1959 or a ’62. Do you have any thoughts on the matter?

RM: Well I don't have any thoughts on the matter I know what it is. We did talk about that once and this is what he told me, besides, he was the one who brought up the conversation, I never asked, he goes, “I know what year this guitar is and I know what I saw on the back of this pickguard. I had to take some things off one day; I had to replace the pickguard. They would break sometimes between the screws and I lifted it up and see how it says here on the back of the pickups it has ’59 on there?” I said, “Yeah”, that’s the date of the pickups.” He goes, “Well, the pickups are 1959, but the body is a ’62 or the guitar is.” I said, “Yeah, it says so up here on the end of the neck.”

I didn’t even ask him well why do you say that, that it is a ’59? I didn’t even bring up the question he was the one who gave all the info. He says, “People say that this is not a ’59 and it’s a ’62, but I call it a ’59 because it has ’59 pickups in it.” I just looked at him and said, “Hey man, it’s your guitar, it’s not mine. Whatever you say it is, that’s it.” Because I didn't argue with him or anything like that, he really liked that about me. It was never an argument when it came to guitars or fixing. I let him have his thing; it was his show.

IA: One last question on Number One, the neck you said you did a lot of re-frets on it and it eventually became worn down to the point of being unplayable. How did Stevie react to losing the neck on Number One?

RM: Like I said earlier, he respected all my opinions when it came to guitar repair. When I do a re-fret on a rosewood neck or an ebony neck, I take the frets out and I plane the board. Now when I actually plane the board, I don’t use a wood plane or a metal plane, I actually use a flat surface or a long flat angular, or square surface and I put some sandpaper on it and then I’d sand it nice and flat so when I put the frets in it’s flat and true! You know, the fingerboard wears out when you’re planing it a little bit and I re-fretted it so many times that it was already thin, that’s just the way it is on a guitar. It was getting so thin that when I was putting the frets in it I would have to cut the slots a little deeper, and by this point I was going to have to cut the slots into the actual maple of the neck, and I said, “No, this is not gonna work, I have to replace this fingerboard.”

That was my judgment and that’s what I told him and he looked at it and said, “Yeah, I see what you’re talking about,” and he goes, “Oh no!” So I said, “I can do it, no big deal.” He said, “How long will it take you to do it?” When that question came up I said, “Well that’s gonna take some time. I can’t just do this in just one day. It’s gonna take a lot longer than that.” At that point in saying it, I just came up with – because I knew what tools I brought with me all the time – just put this thing to rest right now, our tour is ending real soon; let’s put this other neck on it and we can use that and it will work fine. It will work. He just went, “Oh, that’s a great idea! Cool, do it.”

What I had was another Fender neck that belonged to one of his other guitars that he played a lot, and it was called “Red”. Somebody had given him a left-handed after-market neck and he asked me to put that on Red. So I did, and I took Red’s neck off and put it in the box the other neck came in and I thought, this will be my spare neck for whatever reason I have to use it. Well lo and behold, here is the reason to use it. Today, the Number One neck is reunited with Number One and they’re together again. After he had passed, I told Jimmy [Vaughan] the story and he said, “Well can you put it back?”  I said, “Yes!  There’s nothing wrong with it, it just needs to have this work if you wanted to, but you don’t need to do it now of course.” So, Number One is intact again.

IA: What sort of Amps was Stevie using at the time?

RM: When I met Stevie Ray Vaughan, he was using Marshall and Dumble amplifiers. Dumble was this gentleman I met who made amplifiers. I met him in the course of first starting to work with Stevie Ray Vaughan. It was called a Steel String Singer, it was a 150-watt amplifier, that was what it was rated at, but if you looked at the back of it, and if you knew something about amplifiers you knew that it was a 100-watt amp. Anyway, that’s what he used. He would use Marshalls, he would use Fenders. He would have these angled Dumble cabinets, they had a flat one and an angled one, kinda like the Marshall flat and Marshall angle cabinets. They kinda looked like that ya know? They had Electro Voice speakers in them, that’s what Dumble liked, and that’s what we used.

He also used Marshall speakers and of course most of the Fenders we used were combo amps. We would use Super Reverbs and he wound up using Vibroverbs as well. The Vibroverb was the only one that had a 15 (inch speaker) in it. We would also use a Vibrotone it’s a leslie cabinet; he used it for that only. The reason he used the Vibrotone because Charley at the time recommended Vibrotones with the Fender amplifier; that steel guitar players would use these amps because they were real clean and the fifteen inch speaker gave it more bottom.

Stevie with his Amps in the Backround

IA: After Stevie Ray Vaughan passed you ended up working with a number of great artists one of which was Prince. How did that come about and what was that experience like for you?

RM: It was an interesting experience. It came about at the end of a tour with Clint Black and I had gotten this phone call. Prince was doing some kind of recording and playing for like TV shows; about a week’s worth of work and that’s what they told me. They said they were going through a lot of guitar techs and they had heard about me, and I guess they had been going through so many they decided to get anybody, and at the time I was pretty much an anybody [laughs]. I guess because I had worked with Stevie Ray Vaughan that had given me some kind of credential to them. Anyway, it happened to be right after a tour, I was on tour for six weeks and then I flew up to Minnesota.

When I walked in they weren’t rehearsing or anything. A crew member came in to show me his gear, what it looked like, and how it was set up and what was going on. I met the monitor engineer and he said to me, “Well, what have you been doing?” and I told him. So he says, “Well, you’ll be going home real soon. He’s going through guitar techs left and right around here. You’ll probably maybe last a day.” I sort of chuckled and said, “Okay.” You know they promised me that I would get paid for a week regardless and they never did say why. I just decided to do it.

Well I wound up lasting the entire week to make a story short. It was interesting because all the stories you hear about him I guess were true but I never took it as a negatory thing or a weird thing. Like I said, with Stevie when he wanted something or asked for something, I would just go ahead and do it and I did the same thing with Prince; I treated him the same way. They said, “Don’t look at him,” so I didn’t look at him. They said, “I will speak for him,” I said, “Fine.” Prince and his guy would come up to me and Prince would be standing right there next to me and he’d say to his guy, “This is what I want to do with this guitar,” and I’d hear him and I just kept looking at this guy and he says, “Prince wants you to…” and he’d reiterate it again, and I’d say okay, and I would go an I would do it.

Then one day, in this one-week period, he did talk to me, directly; asked for this, asked for that. So I did it, I just did what he wanted. So it was over, the week was over I got home and I was just glad to be home. It was a long two months ya know?

Prince

IA: After Prince you obviously did some more work, but then you worked with Carlos Santana around the time of “Supernatural”. What was it like working with Carlos?

RM: Carlos is the most beautiful person; he is amazing. I really enjoyed it; I had a great time with Carlos. I gave him what he needed and like any artist I ever worked with they’re always trying to feel out their guitar tech and I think he did the same thing with me. He just wanted to know if I was the real deal, and I was, and he figured it out, or he knew it and we just got along great. I was there to experience the nine grammys at the grammy awards show. He just loved everything I did to give him his tone.

I introduced him to Dumble amplifiers and he wound up getting an amplifier made from Dumble and actually met him. Dumble was very excited and said, “Thanks for calling me and telling me he likes my amplifiers.” I said, “Well, I love your amplifiers. I think you’re the greatest amplifier maker and it’s time for Carlos to get one of these.” It just worked good, we did a lot of good things, Carlos and I, but then it was just time for me to go on and do something else. I had an online business that I wanted to nurture a little bit more because it started to grow. So I told Carlos it was time for me to go and said goodbye to him. He did not like that at all, he didn’t want me to go. It’s always hard to say goodbye, no matter what, but I knew what I needed to go do and I had to try it.

Carlos Santana

IA: How did you get involved with John Mayer?

RM: Six months of not doing anything and working on my thing, I got a phone call from the John Mayer camp and I had spoken to John Mayer right after that. During the time before I left, I was in the studio with Carlos and this guy who was one of the producers on this album they were recording, this was after “Supernatural”, he said, “Have you ever heard of John Mayer?” and I said “No.” He says, “You two need to hook up.” I didn’t know who John was, so I said, “What do you mean, hook up?” and he says, “You two would get along great and compliment each other.” So he made the connection and gave me his phone number and the next day I called him up just to say hello and to see what was going on and what this guy was talking about. John and I had a great conversation for an hour, hour and a half and this was just before I had to go back to the studio with Carlos. That was the last time I had spoken to John until after I had quit Carlos.

So that moment came when I got a phone call from his manager asking me to come out and do a couple of shows. I said, “No, I left Carlos, and I want to work on my website thing here. I don’t think I have really any intentions of going back out on the road.” So he said, “Is there any way you can come out and just do a couple of shows?” So I just went, “Okay, alright.” So that’s how that started and how I met John. All it took was for him to play his guitar during sound check and I was just blown away. I thought, “Wow! This guy is really good.” So here I am, still working for John Mayer.

John Mayer

IA: What is your working relationship like with John Mayer?

RM: John is a really cool guy. He’s a true guitar player. He’s one of those guys who has a lot of respect for me and vice versa. That’s how everybody I’ve worked with has pretty much been. There may be one who wasn’t quite like that, but John especially, a tremendous amount of respect for me. We just have this working relationship where he can just tell me something once and I’ll just go an I’ll do it and I’ll come back and I’ll have it and he’ll critique it and go, “Perfect,” or “Needs a little bit more of this,” and it’s just like that.

I know my guitars so well and he knows that I do know, and he knows what I can do, and he just lets me have at it, he doesn’t worry about it. He knows I can fix things, he knows I can’t do it right on the spot, even though sometimes he’s kinda like that. All the guitar players I’ve ever worked with are like that, they want it done right then and there, but they know. They know it’s going to take more than just a second or two to fix something, but for the little time I take to fixing something and getting it back to them it’s pretty quick [laughs]. Our relationship is fantastic. That’s all I can say.

IA: John Mayer’s main guitar is known as The Black 1. Could you tell us a little bit more about that instrument?

RM: Black is his creation. In 2004, he decided to make a guitar, so he went to the Fender factory and he made this guitar. I guess it has some kind of rendition to Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Number One; it’s beat up looking and everything. I believe it has on it 2004. I may be wrong. I think that was the time when he was doing something with it. I think Fender did all the finishings up, but he did have a hand in making it. It is his guitar that he put together and it’s just something that has great tone that he likes and uses all the time. I have done several re-frets on it as well; he plays that aggressive.

John Mayer & The Black1

IA: Are there any gigs that stand out in your mind that stick out as being especially special for you?

RM: Man, that’s a tough one! [laughs]. Man, just all of them. I don't think I can answer that question with just one because that would make one better than the others and I just don’t see them like that.

IA: Is there any particular guitar you’ve worked on that you would pick as your favorite?

RM: Well it would have to be Stevie’s guitars because they were so close to me for a long time, but I only worked with Stevie for five years and I’m going on a longer span of time with John right now. Number One was definitely amazing because of its legend and its tone.

There is one little story to it that’s a pretty good story. He [Stevie] had a white pickguard, but it was kind of off white, kind of lime green, a very very light lime green-white. Anyway, that’s what came on Strats and Stevie always liked how I could with my Flamenco I could do some rasgeuos where my hand would turn in a certain way when I was playing these rasgeuos. It’s the strum that the flamenco guitar players use, ya know that real fast strumming, it’s all pure flamenco or Spanish. Anyway, when I would do that, Stevie would look at me and go, “Man! How do you do that?” So I showed him, and he got his guitar pick and started to do this fanning so to speak on it.

He finally employed it in his guitar playing one day and started doing it, and he goes, “What do you think about think about that?” I said, “It sounds great.” He was using a pick of course, but he kept working on it and working on it and finally employed it onstage. One day he was doing it and he was just rocking it that night man; playing fantastic! So after the show was over I was putting stuff up, putting guitars up and I’d look at it, clean them up, and take the sweat off with a rag. So I look at this pickguard and there was this red mark on the pickguard. I just thought it was some thread from his clothes or something so I went to flick it off and it wouldn’t flick off. I went and I looked at it and I felt it with my fingertip and it was in the pickguard like a scratch. So I got my fingernail on it to try and take it off and it wouldn't come off and I looked at it again real hard and thought, “What is that?”

That night he had been playing with a red pick, he had many different color picks that I would buy for him. He had been strumming so hard and gotten that guitar pick so hot that it had melted, and the pick itself had come off on the pickguard! [laughs]. I started laughing like I am right now and said, “I don’t believe this! I went over to one of our guys and said look at this, and they all looked at it and I told them what it had been and they all went, “No! There’s no way!” So I said, “We’ll all look at it again tomorrow and we’ll take our assumption from that.” We looked at it the next day and all just thought, “Wow! This is unbelievable.”

Stevie Ray Vaughan

IA: On your website you sell a wide variety of great products that in my opinion are a must have for any guitar player or tech out there. Can you tell us more about your product line?

RM: Yeah sure. I have some products on my website, www.texasguitarwhiz.com. I also have some products at another company called www.mojotone.comand they have a line that they call Rene Martinez by Mojotone and they’re a little bit more different than the products I have on my website. I have a concoction that I invented in the early 1970s when I started my guitar repair it’s called Graphitall. It’s a guitar lubricant and it’s what I sell most of. I have that along with a splitter box, and a splitter box is what we used when I was working with Stevie Ray Vaughan to connect all the guitar amplifiers together; one in, six output. I sell that, and Mojotone sells that as well.

I also sell strings. I have my own design of strings. At the end, just before Stevie passed, I’d been talking to a manufacturer about having my own set of guitar strings in my own design so that’s what I did. So these strings are my own design, they are made by GHS Strings and are made to my exact specifications. There’s a reason for them and why they are different and everything.

So I have that, but the most recent thing I have is a DVD that just came out here this past month which you can find on my website, and it’s called, “Rene Martinez: I Remember”. In this DVD is just a touch on the surface of things I want to do, because I want to do some more real detailed DVD’s about instruction; instructional DVDs. But this one touches the surface and it does have stories. It has some great stories, along with never before seen pictures, all my own personal pictures. I have stories on there, like I talk about how it was on that very last night upon at Alpine Valley [The site of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s last show before the helicopter crash that took his life]. 

 I also have instructions on strobing the guitar, setting it up as well as my own personal information. I came up with my own specs as the years started, this is before I met Stevie Ray Vaughan. How high the nut should be, how high should the action be on electric guitars, acoustic guitars, electric bass, flamenco and classical guitar, all the specs and heights and everything. I had them on a business card, and that’s what I used to use to promote business years ago. Anyway, I ran out of those years ago, and I just found some of the recently so I put them on the DVD for everyone to see. Everybody calls them secrets, “What’s your secrets? What’s your secret man?” [Laughs], I don’t have any secrets!

The reason why these things are out and for sale is because I’ve had a lot of people ask me, “Can you make me some of your polish? Can you make me some of your grease you use for guitar lubing? Can you show me how Stevie put all these amplifiers together?” So I just though, enough, I’m going to put up a store and sell this stuff and let it do its own thing.

IA: One thing I was curious about is that I noticed your Big Core Strings you elected to use half-gauges. Why did you choose to do that?

RM: Well, half-gauges to me are like any other thing, there’s just a little bit more. When I talked to Stevie Ray Vaughan about this years ago, he said, “What kind of gauges should I use for my guitar Rene?” At the time he was using big strings, the first string would be like a thirteen, and it would go up in increments like that all the way up to sixty. Sixties were hard to get a hold of back then in the 1980s, you could get them, but you’d have to ask for them, and they’d make you some or whatever.

So he would start cutting his fingers eventually and he would bleed and I said, “Ya know, you can still get the same tone playing a thinner string but in different increments.” He was very curious about that and since he trusted me, I came up with the gauges 11, 15, 19 plain; 28, 38, 58 and that was the gauge we used and he loved it and his fingers loved him for it. There’s another story in that, but why are my big core strings different?

Tone is what it was, and mass is what it was, and mass is how you get your tone. Well, when you stretch an eleven or a nine, or a ten and you finally get it stretched to where it doesn't go out of tune anymore, it’s no longer a true nine, or ten, or an eleven anymore. It’s just a little bit less and a little bit less is all it takes for it to be not as much and the tone as well could suffer. So I thought, wouldn’t it be great if they could make a nine and a half or a ten and a half or an eleven and a half. Well they finally started doing that after Stevie passed of course. I just decided one day I’d like to have my own design of strings and that’s where that comes from.

So with a bigger core, still being round wound, and being one hundred percent nickel, not nickel-plate, but one hundred percent nickel, it became the string I’ve always wanted to have. I wish Stevie were still here to try these, he would have just loved them because of the tone.

IA: You mentioned just a moment ago you had another story about Stevie Ray Vaughan and his fingers, would you care sharing that with us?

RM: Well he was cutting his fingers and he would be bleeding at the end of the show. Well one day I saw him spraying his fingertips before a show and he showed me his fingers and I just thought, “Golly! Look at that man, that’s a mess!” They were just all cut up and everything so I asked him, “What are you spraying on them?” and he said, “New skin.” At the time they had that band-aid stuff, they still sell it today, it’s a spray you put on like a band-aid, except it’s not a band-aid but it wouldn’t last. It might last two or three seconds and he’d start bleeding again.

So I introduced him to superglue and said, “Use some superglue and then we’ll get a callous from the other hand which will put some more skin on it and make it last longer.” Well it did, and it saved his fingers for at least a bit longer of a time. But since I introduced this animal of the story to him he was doing it every night. We would have tubes of super glue ordered in from the store to have on hand at all times and he was running out of calloused skin on his hands. I looked at his other hand, and you see what you do is you put super glue on your fingertips then you put it on the callous part of your hand that's got extra skin and you’d have to tear it off and so you’d have less skin. So he was running out of skin! So I wound up being the victim and then I said, that’s it, we’ve got to do something different or we’re all gonna be running out of skin here and that’s when I said, ya know, maybe we should change to a different [string] gauge.

IA: So what is next for you Mr. Martinez?

RM: Well I still work for John Mayer and I’m just gonna hang out with him. I love John, he’s a great guy, he’s a great friend. He’s a great guitar player and a great songwriter and I just like being around him and I want to stay around him for a while. I don’t think I’m gonna go until he doesn’t need me or want me anymore and that would be fine too. So wherever he wants to go next, that’s where I’ll go. I want to continue promoting my products and everything. I want to continue another DVD. This one here is gonna be real special, more intricate as far as repair work. How I do repairs, how I do re-fret work from A to Z and be extremely explicit. Stuff like that, that’s what I want to do and I just want to keep doing this and then I just want to keep playing my guitar; I’ll never stop playing and just enjoy life.

IA: Well it has been a real pleasure and a real honor to speak with you today. Thank you so much.

RM: Well great, thank you very much.

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