Dave Gregory Talks 12-String Ricks, Strats, 335s, Pedals… and XTC! That Pedal Show

[Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] hey guys welcome to that color showdown here Mik here and I'm Dave hello so for all of you that don't know shame on you but however this is Dave Gregory Dave was growing up was my way there we go make a honk Dave was you know being a kid in Brisbane when I first heard STC and I heard this amazing guitar playing and then that was sort of me damn I I had my what you call your Epiphany mark yeah yeah from listen to you play there you go yeah heavens to Betsy yeah so and one of the things that you're always associated with is 12-string guitars so I thought we'd have a look at some of those and then also have a look at some of the SCC things and it's hasn't we using that period but um yeah gents so we start with the guitar you're playing yeah well um obviously as a kid growing up I was a huge Beatle fan I was 11 years old when the Beatles sort of when Beatle mania struck this country and the world in fact and one of the great things that one of the many new sounds that they brought was the sound of the 12 string guitar you know that age I'd know what it was I remember flipping the 45 of can't buy me love over and hearing this riff that sort of went I didn't know what it was it was a brand-new sound it's Santa throws it sound like a keyboard it cannot be a guitar just guitars I make a noise like that and it was one of these Rickenbacker 12-string first one that Rickenbacker had sort of made and given to George Harrison when the Beatles went to America in February of 1964 and of course the guitar was put straight to use on the on the following record and that's that's where I first heard it and I swore to myself that time I must find the source of that sound because I'm in love with it right and it took me years of well that's it before I even picked up a guitar know which end to blow into you know as time went by it was always there then the Byrds arrived the following year right Tambourine Man which just turned everybody's heads around and it just became part of modern pop music I just wanted wanted to find it and anyway time went by got my first electric guitar and some basic chords then Jimi Hendrix arrived and Eric Clapton arrived and Jeff Beck none of whom played 12 string guitar so it kind of got sidelined for a few years but it was always there you know at some point I will find a Rickenbacker 12-string because that sounded resonated so strongly with you very much anyway we kept this spin forward years and years I joined this amazing band XTC from my hometown who had a record deal they actually had a record that he and someone prepared to put money behind them to make records and this was this was my dream to be in a band that was actually signed by a record company and to make a living as a musician was just you know best thing they could be so anyway we made two albums guitar bass and drums two guitars bass and drums and after this after we've done the second of those two arms black see that's the first one was my life as wise the second one as I say black see and I to which I felt the need to think broader about you know taking a guitar using more keyboards and expanding the sounds of the guitars because I figured there was only so far you could go with just that basic line of shells but certainly with the songs that were coming that Andy and Colin were writing and I thought yes time it's time I finally went looking for that elusive Rickenbacker guitar though and the first one I found was in the summer of 1981 I found myself with some money to spend I always wanted the George Harrison guitar which was similar to this and I couldn't find one for love nor money George's guitar was as I later discovered stereo wired had to jet sockets and mono and a stereo and it had these lovely pearl triangular inlays and sort of cat's eye shape yeah I'd love that look together with the plastic bindings on the top and the back but you never saw them no you just didn't see them anywhere was George's sunburst or was it it was exactly the same as what some of us yeah except for all the deluxe appointments it was exactly the same body shell and neck and everything but had they had the extra wiring same type of knobs and the same with these toaster what they call toasters top the pickups now which everybody loves the sound of and that basically defines the sand off that chiming Rickenbacker thing we all know and love so well so anyway as I was saying looked for years for one like George's couldn't find one anyway so I thought well I'm just gonna have to see if I can find a new one that's similar and to that end just that this was the first Rickenbacker I owned that's a bought secondhand in the summer of 1981 and abroad along to rehearsals because we were rehearsing songs for a new album which would become English settlement which still isn't quite a lot of favors you actually had a hit single on it and that was sense it's working overtime this was this guitar played a big part in creating the sound of that record and became quite a character for element of that of the English settlement Ireland and so this guitar is stereo wipers at the stereo yes the Rico sound optional should you ever need it well it's basically it routes the pickup separately okay you know to to to to separate so amps doesn't want that and it came with a little pedal that you could you could stand on to you know tell it from I think it's basically change it from mono to stereo I can't remember I've never owned the actual pedal that goes with this I've never used this always use the mono socket and so we just I mean literally chimed with our audience and I'm nice and and do the snow and of favors and so it's basic again I still hankered after the George Harrison 12-string and I swore one day you know I'd hang onto this guitar until I could find a proper one right so help us out they which model is that this is a three six this is the modern quote-unquote three sixty twelve yeah which is what George's guitar was it was a three sixty that's actually based on the three thirty which is the second grade down it would didn't have the deluxe appointments yeah and they were imported into this country by Rose Morris who were written back as agents right at the time and they called it the model 1993 for whatever reason and so that is basically even though some people would refer to it as a three thirty / 12 actually a 1993 so that would have been the same body showed through exactly a 360 yes yes at the time I was around that body shape disappeared after 1964 - replaced by this one which had the rounded class and just a single and the binding on the back we had anyone done that before that do you know I don't know I don't know at all because originally the binding on the back would have had this checkerboard inlay yeah I can show you on that guitar they bought it back we'll talk about that yeah no they were I think because of mass production everything a lot of the fine details that made these things so special were you know they cut corners to and quality control probably Missouri Compromise slightly over time but having said that I took took this sketch I did they did the album I did the album English settlement and the following one mama which wasn't a very successful record didn't have any hits on it but this guitar was still part of it and [Music] this guitar after season it's nice to play as some of the others I struggled with this but it was a labor of love you know you get some instruments see they can be a bit of it there can be dogs yeah you don't care because they just sound right and they look cool and whatever they just slot with whatever it is you're doing at the time looked so I persevered with it and had a measure of success with it you know what do you think made it difficult to play I don't I can't really tell you other than most guitarists I think at the time anyway gave up on Rickenbacker 12-string z' for two reasons well one main reason plus they could never keep the black and also if you notice the width that the nut is just the same as it would be on a six-string guitar and yet you've got 12 strings all fighting for space yeah I can't get your fingers on the chords and if they're out of tune as well it's just too much like hard work for a lot of players so they didn't become as popular as otherwise they might have been had they just fought a bit more carefully about the practical difficulties of just fretting you know how it's just you have to I've had some practice at it so I've hired a God around it but it wasn't easy and also the setup sometimes I know a lot of old Rickenbacker's have to have the next reset after time I don't that's a lot of tension on that but an awful lot of tension and it's very skinny and fragile and the top isn't that strong right so quite often you'll see them you know this this end it can't it gets dished in the middle you know and then the net will need to come off and be reset so fortunately that hasn't happened with this guitar too badly but the action isn't lowers it's fairly fairly high off the fingerboard so you have to be really determined you only need to want to play this thing that you're gonna get any sound after where the sound comes from interesting before English settlement people hadn't heard 12-string on the radio for a long time certainly in you know in the what you call it the contemporary contemporary music and so you are you are credited with bringing back the sound of 12-string to popular music well was it me or was it Peter Buck from REM because I think REM were probably beat me to the punch on twelve string I can't be absolutely certain we might have been but the thing is we never we weren't a world famous band the way they were dry so it's kind of a bit niche what we were doing certainly there were at the time in in Britain we were the tail end of punk there wasn't a lot of melody in pop music what there was a lot of it was synthetic you know a lot of bands using synthesizers and teh bloops and what-have-you so guitar bands weren't very there weren't too many of them and yeah I mean I guess it was the same you know with the Mellotron with the following harbin mummer i do some well we've got the 12 string guitar and what else do we need was for acid I'd love from the seventies the sound of the men at Ron I wonder if we can find a mehnat Ron we can't I kept I could find a Hammond organ and got it into my house I've gone for a Hammond organ because people were getting rid of them they were buying synthesizers so again I think we were first one of the first of the new wave bands to actually start investigating vintage gear where some you know a lot of the other bands were obsessed with you know the data since and all the art officials but I could call artificial instruments what I find fascinating about that is so you take this thing that sounds so iconic and then you guys know if you've ever played a 12-string the first thing you want to do is play mr. Tambourine Man and it's it's that and yet your output from that period doesn't sound in any way pastiche it doesn't sound in any way rehashing the past and yet so were you we're always conscious of that were you true consciously trying to avoid sounding like old stuff even though you were influenced by it I would certainly say Andy Partridge definitely was against at that time anything rehashed you know he wasn't interested in rock and roll he wasn't interested in any revivals because he's you know he's got it's an original thinker yeah and he's very proud of the fact that everything he does has to be you know from him it's his that's not saying to Dan earlier I had the luxury of having some of the best raw material to work with and so I you know the songs that he was writing like you know since it's working overtime and jason and the argonauts and all of a sudden they won't lent themselves to this chiming rickenbacker thing if i just lucked into really in fact you know that was back in the days when we really did work as a band and everyone brought something individual to those songs that created the whole but certainly Andy was not into reviving anything at all prior to the juice of stratosphere we can get onto that can we just hear the first the opening chord all of a sudden because it's something I plan to show quite a lot it's this thing [Music] [Applause] [Music] when I first heard that cord that that's the sequence and I just it just blew my mind and I sat down there working out I see I told Blair [Music] but that that that's what I always play oh yes it probably was yeah you know I can't remember I guess with you I cannot remember such a long time since a such a great sound these guitars made out of the same stuff yes maybe they're all maple are there yes does that one sounds kind of bass you know the pickup is these are called high gain pickups right and they put the started using these in 1969 they replaced the toaster I gather the bosses at Rickenbacker never cared for the sound of the toaster which seems extraordinary they wanted something that was going to be you know gonna match the Gibson humbucker and add a more powerful output so they went with these which is a bigger winding but for me I don't know I just it's it's fine you know it's it's it's a different it is a very different sound and it's still essentially Rickenbacker but for me it'll always be I always want to hear the toasters yeah sorry bit of a tangent here Roger was my soul or somebody yes was he the Rickenbacker designer or did he leave Rickenbacker and go someone he he went to Rickenbacker and he designed this yeah this shape he was a car designer right or something oh no no no no he was he was the son of a German lutea his name was Ross myself and he used to make these guitars as the brand name of Roger Oakland Germany and then Roger decided that he was going to you know spread his wings and go to California where life was good and you could make a career as a guitar maker and he got work at Rickenbacker and he designed this lovely what they call the christen Christine way via the cresting wave is actually this of course that's that's lasting wave if you see there's the crest of the wave and he also had this thing called the German car which he took - he actually took along - defender I think later and up but basically started to looking back yeah I reckon back a 381 which is a hideous looking thing I had this German Carver and same body shape yet as this but it has this big sort of champers kind of a sham for all the way around the edge in it yeah yeah and but he was you know quite a character and I think the story of Roger Ross Marvel has still to be told in full because he's such an obscure character you know he was just a backroom guy who's basically a woodworker and he designed a lot of these shapes but was never never fully got the recognition you know and I think you know it's time all good time goes by someone somewhere will unearth his story because it was quite colorful them write the book tony bacon if you're watching this you probably already he may well be researching so this is 1963 that guitars summer of 1964 all right and you have to remember that at the time you if you wanted a Rickenbacker guitar you had to order it and wait they had a waiting list I'm eccentric or they were ridiculously expensive well that would have cost the original owner two hundred and twenty guineas in 1964 which must be close to five grand in today's money probably well well and you had to wait yet to wait a long time and the first batch that came over basically what what sold this thing was the Beatles movie a hard day's night and because there's George with this fancy new shiny Rickenbacker than making this amazing sound and the Beatles as a saint was so big rose maurice ordered 25 of them and that's one of the first 25 i think they they arrived in august believe 60 for this ridiculous price tag and they they sold them all and then there was a second batch sixty-five which had a different tail piece on it it had a are this this is the branding which is very pretty but if you want to sew 12 strings into this thing you need to set a day aside that's just awful I love it do you look at this you just tilt that towards the camera say damn um are there strings in the same they held in the same they're just little holes in that trapeze yeah just a hole and and the way I string it is I put one one string goes well below that goes in from the top and now they come and I hope they come you have to be careful though because I've broken no end of strings just stringing them up you know they're little brass drum at the back comes pinging off haven't I seen a picture of me holding it I'm holding I've got it oh good I need to check I've seen a picture of you with some other owners of the first batch is that right you yes you found them yeah well I know four four of the original ones and they actually now have fun oh that's amazing my friend Alan Rogan had one for a long time which he sold a few years ago and now he understand he's has the one that Steve Howe used to play well well and so we can account for five the other two were the notorious Kelly brothers who wrote the amazing book about fenders Golden Age oh then yeah yeah yeah they've got one each and I took this one around and we did a little photo session with Tony bacon yeah but if anyone did inform that Tony bacon is a much published awesome and guitar historian and author and if you've read a book on guitars at some point chances are he only wrote it or contributed to it and the Kelly brothers did the Golden Age fender the Golden Age what a fantastic book that 252 264 or something is it something like that whenever it was yeah beautiful beautiful books over yeah if we can pass these one long and then perhaps we can I I've I'll grab this one cuz I'd really interested in talking about the solid-body oh yeah isn't it great is this an that been reset David it hasn't been reset but the head starts been repaired twice yeah so it's on its third head yeah Johnny Kincaid did that brilliantly I haven't look on the back Johnny because we replaced oh you'll kill him here there's a splice there if you look really careful you can just see it the only wood the only reason you can see it is because you can see the lacquer that's it you can't see the wood you can tell just don't see the lacquer can you see that song where's that you want you can't see and let's give Johnny Oh Johnny [Music] it's crazy isn't it yeah what is that like 41 points wunens how many's I always get my metrics my um Imperials wrong oh I couldn't tell you I'm still working yes what are you talking about the width of the width of the nut it's probably about 1 and 5/8 or something I justify days it's pretty narrow yeah it's no more than 42 mm that's for sure I mean it said it actually feels narrower and then it's done a strap yeah yes it probably is it's just amazing you don't even have to plug it in yeah it's just that it's there in that there's wery resonant yeah [Music] sorry so when when did Rickenbacker solar bodies they've been making solid bodies since the 50s well I didn't start I'd I have to be careful now yes they started with the capris in the mid 50's which i think is where roger bought supplies or came in I may be wrong about snow I think you're right and I think he did the the original they've this odd sort of chulip shaped a single pick up little combo they called it wasn't there the 450 and I have to swat up on my Rickenbacker history but I got a feeling that's where Roger came in and the hollow bodies they had a few attempts before they came up with that pipe you know they were slightly that the original 360s with a slightly thicker body and it had a slightly different shaped horns on it and didn't have them I'm not sure if you had the binding or not John Lennon of course is the big Rickenbacker salesman because he had the thing called free pickup at all the 3/4 size 3/4 size right oh right but didn't it had the questing wave was it 325 323 25 with three pickups didn't have a cresting wave points God's mad women death and it was a natural finish with it with a girl pick guard and then he took it to to Jim Burns I believe who sprayed it black and then Rickenbacker saw this thing and when they gave George his 12 May gave Lenin another full earth 325 in black which is when he's most seen with you know with a white pickguard oh man we're getting sprayed again so that's a that's a now this well this is interesting because Tom Petty and Mike Campbell went to Rickenbacker in the late 90s they'd had this up and down the torpedoes Hetty's on the cover holding this fired low twelve string guitar which was a one-off they didn't know at the time it was a one-off it was an experiment that Rickenbacker done somehow ended up in like Campbell's hands and they liked this guitar a lot and they said why don't you reissue this guitar but we want some changes made and the first thing you're gonna change is this is good I'm looking at that saying that's probably 44 minutes and yes that was the most important thing what expanding the nut width so we can actually play that and get rid of that our thing and put the trapeze back on so I put the strings on in a hurry if we need to and so in 1991 I think Rickenbacker went and made a thousand a limited edition of a thousand Tom Petty's signature twelve strings with this shape they did them either in fire glow or black or natural I think I've seen some blue ones as well they had this lovely checkerboard binding which was something else I think Roger Ross muscle might have introduced it might have been his idea which they dropped as I say in then in the mid 60s when production totals you know needed to be kept up and so yeah so once this thousand run of Petty's had been sold this is going wrong we'll put this out as without Tom's signature on it yeah and we call it the six sixty twelve and it's a fine guitar I have to say oh it's a really really I always assumed that the hollow body was essential to the sound of the chime the chiming sound of the Rickenbacker boots it be honest this does the job it's every bit as well maybe we could hear them side-by-side and play and have a little listen [Music] that sounds like a Rickenbacker to me it's it's just sounds if if it's in any way possible even shinier than this one which sounds less full maybe it may be that the strings are newer because they are using this and these guitars haven't fill out their cases for a couple of years would you win would you indulge us and mines play that one just so we can kind of hear that yeah it's a mad because the body's tiny and the none that correct [Music] who unless that we may as well finish the the trio and do this one as well then just two sorry this is the total indulge indulgent said what we should do before the end of the video is try the stereo okay yeah if he's not too dusty in there [Music] you this is slightly slightly brighter top-end I think possibly that has the richest low-end solid-body probably has more weight in their in their low mids but this still sound like Rickenbacker's sound wonderful really by the times mixed in the track yeah you're not really going to notice that much difference I notice um playing with this fifth pot here oh yes yeah well that's the blender control and what it is it's a subtle way of yeah let me let me see you know part of the sound of the early Rickenbacker's was what a lot of guitarists refer to as the chiclet capacitor and which was a like a high-pass filter wired to this pickup which made it sound a lot brighter and ringy er but because this one didn't have it there was an imbalance between the two so the idea the thinking behind it was that you could balance the output of the two pickups without having to go to the main volume controls I don't know and I've wired this in Reverse actually they reckon but the way it comes from the factory is that it's it's all the way down for the for The Full Monty but because I like things yeah ivory why it makes more sense though it makes more sense that way so when when when this part is fully open [Music] and there's quite a disparity in output between the two but you can blend the two together to get a little bit of warmth from this pickup just to bolster up the brightness of is one so that's basically all it does when the switch is in the middle I tend to just leave this just a notch or two behind the maximum yep slightly over-engineered I would say but it's part of the Rickenbacker thing also how was it just a quick reflection on them I'm travelling with them well yeah they're okay as I say they don't as long as you're careful stringing them up they don't they will stay in - you have to get the nut make sure the nut is properly cut mmm I had a problem with this guitar when I first got it yes you just reminded me now because I asked Johnny king K to make a new nut for it which he's done so that the strings you know move freely in the slots sure if they start grabbing in the slots you've got no chance at all and although you know you'll never get it in tune or to get it to stay in tune but because of course you're not bending strings so there's not a lot of sideways pressure on the strings so they'll generally stay put if you get this get them sewn onto the pegs properly they'll stay in tune but fingers crossed but just make sure that they're properly stretched when you put the strings on they should stay put reasonably reasonably okay and that's as I said earlier that there's a lot of guitarists are put off by the fact that they're just too high-maintenance tuning wise and also having to you know fumble around down here just to get that any any kind of but certainly with open string opening strings to play yeah when you've got so playing a C chord or something it does take a bit of work blimey O'Reilly one thing I just would like to mention is well I've seen this in a thousand pictures having looked at many guitar magazine pages over the years but that if you look at the headstock there the one set of tuning pegs points back and one points out so that I don't know about you but whenever I've played a 12-string I go to tune and I'm always tuning the wrong streets perfect yeah but you still need to be sober when you as it can be a bit confusing there is a knack to that but you're right fender 12 string guitar it's like just oh is this the right one and then you find you've just yeah retune something completely that was me tuning - cool yeah I'd love to hear the danelectro so we're at Nam and down Metro have just brought out a new 12 yeah so if you don't have because Rickenbacker doesn't make a cost-effective guitar there's no squire or Epiphone version of Rickenbacker is there they're a few thousand quid one would assume so there are many budget twelves on the on the market we saw this one at Nam this year I get the 59 12 predictably old big old damn let's see what we see what you make of it Dave being somewhat more experienced than us in this this is a brand new literally on the days ago yes he's got my right nostril this is so much warm I had a gala tuning it means very little [Music] that's pretty damn good [Music] [Applause] [Music] actually they've taken um they've taken a yeah it's like a monster I just it's like a mock-up here mosrite knobs and 2 Danelectro like lipstick yeah it isn't when it wasn't I'm bucking mode it was definitely throaty and powerful and less traditional perhaps but so one thing one thing that you would do so for those that don't know Dave and I were in a band for the last 10 years called tin spirits and one thing that you would do a lot is you know we know that sound we know that the cherry 12 strings down but you would use it driven and play solos and things with with 12 which is awesome and but and it's a whole other world could we hear some of the black one because I think this one at the time you see it I even I was looking after a guitar for Steve Hogarth how Marillion it's her he when I stopped touring with him in 2000 or whenever the last tour was he giving the whole please hello mr. age I look he gave me this guitar to look after and it was in my possession for 1516 years he was so busy with the band that you never you never asked me for it back and you know I looked after it so when we put the band together I thought well this is something we can use you know as good sounding guitar it's again it's not just two guitars bass and drums and he was guitar 12-string guitar bass and drums so I was we would be done all these gigs and I was taking it out and playing it and then one day out of the blue he helped me and said you still can help me guitar piles down so I said yeah cause Steve it's your guitar you know you know I have no business playing it one more even you know doing what I'm doing with it so of course it's your instrument it's yours so you took it back so I thought right now I got a brother I didn't want to take the hollow bodies out because the the volume we used to play out with Tim spirits it would have been kind of unusable because they would have fed back using distortion pedals and everything that's not a good idea with Rickenbacker yeah because they do have a tendency to howl but um I thought yeah well I've got to get a solid body guitar I wonder if I can find another petty well the prices were just going out through the roof of these because as a limited edition they stopped making them and suddenly everybody wanted them yeah that's the thing when it when everything's out of production everyone wants to know regardless of how quickly they sold in the first place and so I started poking around on eBay and within a few weeks that came up and no one seemed interested in it looks very very nice it's almost in brand-new condition I'll put my bid in no one behold nobody else was interested so no ID so I went up to London and and collected it and I was I thought well it's be interested to see how it differs from the petty limited edition the pickups aren't as hot but it sounds nicer in my opinion the sound and I guess they they vary from guitar guitar so they went back to the toaster for this yep this one thing that's always fascinated me is the lacquered fingerboard yes you mean you don't normally see that on rosewood you that's right left I think it's very pretty yeah but you know when it comes to bending strings yeah you'd rather it wasn't there you're not gonna do it on a 12 string so this doesn't really matter lacquered board on a 12 string guitar yeah perfectly okay just looks nice and shiny yeah well it's probably the longest we've ever been on that pedal show without any distortion so that's the thing it's not you tend not to associate 12-string guitar with effects pedals [Music] [Music] [Applause] it's all coming back to me you know I used to struggle with that it was such it um it was really intense what say I was so intense but it was that's from a song called Ango and this is the solo that you play on that with the 12 string mmm is but it's awesome for getting where I was it was just you know because it was just such a big mess of sound but yeah you're right it was steep as one of those happy accidents I needed more power and volume I happened to be playing 12 string guitar and we just got this immense B noise yeah okay well maybe we can have a look at some other you know we need to have a chat about the guitars you used in XTC apart from the 12 string dozen would just be crazy of us not to do so if they were here done it imagine so if we if we start with John's and wires and I think the strat is a very big part of that album okay yeah yeah it's the one I used most on that record yeah yeah I have to put a blindfold on at this point well this is the financial future this guitars not I mean it's had a lot of work done to it over the years but you know what this is my lucky I bought it in 1978 from a friend cost me 150 pounds it still had the the bridge cover which I always put whenever I finish using I always put the cover back on for the luck I always take it off before I play basically the reason it was kind of affordable was the neck had a big lump in it somewhere around here it had walked around the grain and even though it was it was all factory and everything I could there was no way I could straighten it I had loosened the truss rod nothing so it was pretty good for playing slide and playing the kind of stuff that I did with XTC on that first record so yeah this is it this had three guitars this I had the 335 which has another interesting story to tell about it and an SG standard that I've had for 40 40 odd years but I forgot to bring lemon didn't use it for very much it's something inside that we saw at Tom riffs that you lent - yes - Keneally's in my LD yeah my connealy also sorry Dave yeah so yes that's right the SG was you know I said well Mike I've got a house full of guitars here which would you know you're gonna do this gig and the guy the guy just decided you'd like to play he was on here over here on holiday so you'd like to play while he was here and so I called my friend Andy pettite riffs bar and asked him if he had a slot that my friend from Frank's a but he didn't know who Mike was played with Frank Zappa oh I think we probably sort something out for him and God bless him and he got us a night at riffs bar and you know we put the word out on the web and in less than a week the place was pretty much sucked and so Mike so Mike didn't have any instruments with him as I say just come over for a holiday and he I said we can use my match so Sam which of these guitars would you like and you just had to look around he said oh I like the look of the Hat I pointed the SG strapped it on and oh yes he says this feels like home and so he went out it with a borrowed keyboard my my gear and he'd never played before and did a solo one-man show at riffs bar for two hours was at least two hours it was it was we do hold all crowd stood there and everyone's mouth is sort of partially up and going not quite believing what they're saying so he'll play at chord they'll play piano and then I'll do a solo and it's and singing improvising it is astonishing yeah it was so wait it's a the way that man's brain is wired musically I've never seen anything like it no I'm real yeah and the music was pretty good as well amazing so yeah so we're wolves oh yes d3 strong 1963 Stratocaster originally this was in Sherwood green metallic oh and I bought it it was that was the factory finish which today would be worth a small fortune but I thought it looked really ugly with the rosewood board it just looked really drab and I think the show would green looks great with a maple fingerboard yeah but with the rosewood it just looked really dull and uninspiring so I said right I'm taking that off would go hippie wood natural and so that's how it looked when I joined XGC was all antique violin I think it's how McClaren described it when he did it for me but it still had this bow in the mech and it made it it's time I took this out on the road on those early xdc tours and it was my main guitar and it fitted you know the spiky musial and he was writing and calling as well and served me well and then in 1981 I was in a shop in in New York City if there was they had some lovely beautiful bird's-eye maple necks that Phil cupich key from fender and made his left fender and started up on his own he'd done these beautifully figured maple necks I thought that looked great on my old stratton that would be a perfect replacement for the wall be neck so this neck came off went in the cupboard for 28 years while the cubic enoch stayed on and I used it I was quite happy with it it actually improved the sound of the guitar and so that stayed in the cupboard as I say for a long long time and I pulled it out one day and thought you know this is this is worth money there has to be a way of fixing this I took it back to Johnny Kincaid Johnny another hole yeah and I said you know you can see the problem Johnny what can you do about it he said well I think I be able to find a way around this but it will mean taking off the existing fingerboard which by 1963 fender were making their rosewood boards it was just a thin veneer and it just followed the contour of the board the truss rod was slotted in underneath so he said what I can do is plane that off plane the the neck flat and then I'll put a slab at the Rosewood on top and we'll make a new fingerboard and I said well that sounds a bit drastic I don't want to watch you do it uh-huh as long as I don't have to watch I said fine but god bless him we did he took all the little clay position markers out of the original fingerboard and numbered them and these so they all went back so that in the same position they were when it only before he planed that the board and he found this gorgeous piece of Brazilian rosewood and made it you know the flat slab yeah like the 60 like the ones that disappeared in 62 and put it on you know I think he must have had the guitar and his shop for about nine months because I just kind of forgot about it and he said one day called up and said your guitars your necks ready Dave do you want to come down and check it out put it on the guitar and I was just astonished because not only is it beautiful bit of luthiers the luthier skill you know and actually just getting this back to factory but it also improved the sound the guitar couldn't believe that it that just replacing a fingerboard as just a strip of wood could have made so much difference well and because he's so passionate about what he does you know you can tell the love that went into the work just you wouldn't know if I hadn't pointed it out don't think then that wasn't a factory a factory finger player I divorced you why it was a slab yeah he would have done yes just about but it is a snot I mean the it's a national treasure that man here's the lovely thing is really yes yeah [Music] tend not to hear that too often on new guitars this this is why we love the vintage stuff so much it's just a fall it's just the band width of that it's that's the word to the right word to use it just seems so much more pronounced and just more musical music yeah [Music] and that's through the clean channel it's mad isn't it because it's got brightness but it's not shrill yeah is like guitars to me seem to have a very heavy brightness that's right that like this awful silver blade this sort of gets in the way of what you really want to be listening to yeah no that's that's it I've always found its it's like all the Japanese guitars have that and it's very frustrating because a lot of their the woodworking and the finishing at that from Japanese since what's really top notes is great stuff they always let themselves down with the electronics in my opinion yeah but then see I've been spoiled by being lucky enough to have a pre CBS fender I'm used it all these years so you still play it much too I do yes this is the one I go to if anyone wants a strap this is the one five or six straps now and they're all good even the Japanese ones good but they don't quite have it yeah one thing that's so when we first started playing we had our Western that rehearsal religious like over the first couple of years we've hardly missed a night and every rehearsal you would bring along another guitar ah and and at the end of rehearsal don't say hey Dan have a go of this and that's how I found the Flying V and that's how I found my SG jr. yeah but these guitars kept coming there was like endless but there was obviously you found this thing with these with these old guitars and you found this early on like before people were buying vintage guitars you have identified this thing about these guitars are made in a certain period of time mm-hm and like your old your Les Paul which is a 54 53 53 yeah yeah and you told me the story about you buying that into a in the States and this you know before these guitars were crazy popular and what was it about when you play these finicky towers what was what what do they have that you just weren't finding in the new shiny guitars yeah that's a good question I can't I'm not sure I can answer it I just knew that I was attracted to them maybe from growing up and seeing bands with because you know when I was at school you couldn't afford to buy a Fender guitar nobody could you just had to it was if you got the opportunity to touch one then you take it you know Isis going to Jeff Kempster shop in Swindon and you know he'd be looking at this you know there's kids coming in he didn't want us touching his guitars hanging on the wall and that's where they were staying but occasionally you might just get to lay hands on a Rickenbacker or a Fender guitar and it would be just haha this is this if you know and you just dream of the day you can afford to put a deposit on one right I think he probably started from just dreaming about electric guitars as a child and and I also used to subscribe to beat instrumental magazine which had all the ads every month glossy ads for you know impossibly expensive guitars that you would didn't have a chance of ever owning so they became sort of these iconic images of the unattainable it's you know guitar porn in its essence right I think that probably and it was just this notion of trying to you know finally live the dream of my youth of finally being able to lay handsome buy or acquire somehow these iconic images that I could only have dreamt about when I was growing up I think that's a big part of it and lost algea thing yeah and quite by accident you realize that some that you know as the more instruments you play the vintage stuff was better made it sounds better it feels better it looks better and then you'd read you know guitars saying well you know the new CBS Fender guitars are rubbish really expensive there outside or you know play like the old ones and so you thought well could this be true because they're really expensive they must be just as good but in fact they weren't they were firewood and most of them allows me to see how much some of this stuff is fetching a torch relay stuff from the 70s like a 76 Stratford oh five grand no don't and I I think it's important to say that not every single guitar made in that period was was a dog right but yeah they didn't be quite the same thing CBS didn't care they were only interested in sales figures and if you read you know first White's autobiography or any of the respected historic guitar historians they they all tell this sorry tale of how the accountants took control because you have to remember CBS was sitting when the biggest corporations in the States they'd acquired this little company and they were determined to to cash in on the on the brand that's what they cared about ok can we can we have a look at the your 35 because that's again another guitarist yeah yeah another guitar that when I heard it it was like blew my mind no again this is another Johnny Kincaid refinish and I'll tell you why it was refinished I was working at a parcel delivery company and I had known it's asked me you know how far back should I go with his storm I found this guitar I've always wanted a 335 like Eric Clapton's with cherry finish block inlays and stud tail piece and it was a question of finding one used and so one day I had saved up my money it was just after Christmas of 77 78 early month in January of 1978 I happened to be looking in the classified ads at the Melody Maker and there was a a used 335 for sale and it was just about affordable so I called the number Asif after it got mouth look at it so I drove up the motorway after work to this little house in terraced Harrison Chyzyk and the guy showed me in and said right here's a guitar he taught us her haps and I've never seen it more badly beaten the musical instrument in my entire days honestly it was just mashed no pickguard the knobs have been gone they had these modern little hatbox knobs all those awful things that Gibson made in the seventies and there were scratches and dings all over it it was completely beaten up worst of all the headstock had been knocked off and someone had kind of forged a repair they put a peg in here and all the lacquer had gone from the back of the fingerboard I said oh my god this is oh geez no it was as bad as that well you know I thought you said you want to do you want to plug it in I said well I've come all this way might as well well as soon as I heard it that was it it was sold even even in that stage this is the best guitar I've ever played and so you doctor turn off the prize for you for the condition it was in and I drove home with it and I thought you know I'm onto this guitar for a while until I can find a cleaner one and I'll pass it on but as time went by prices of these things shot you know the early eighties when the vintage guitar thing started in around about 1980 from that point forward everything there was nothing affordable anymore I'm vintage wise and he's not not by me so I decided to persevere and again I took it on tuned to the sessions for the first HDC for the drums and Weis album and Andy and I both used this for most solos on that album ten feet tall real buy real which you know a lot of people seem to like and we just guitar solos weren't really part of why people bought xdc records so they still aren't but occasionally and he would allow us eight bars in the middle of one of his songs so you take advantage i remember we just did I think we did the solos for 10 feet tall and real buy real in a couple of hours one afternoon when we plugged this guitar direct me into the desk didn't use them really that's how we did it but years years went by I decided I take it to Johnny and get the hits this was in the summer of 1984 and I bumped into Hugh Cornwall from Stranglers down at Crescent Studios when we were working on album called the big Express and Hugh dropped in to say although he's a nice fellow and I know that he did just how I got introduced to Johnny Kincaid I said you know I've seen these Kinkaid guitar so I know they're based in Bristol and what's your opinion of me use over the Moose at all you've got a gun if you've got anything done go and see Johnny he'll sort you out he's a lovely fellow and he's really really talented in that time johnny was still working with his brother designer so I said well I've got this really beating up old 335 and it needs a head story but he said just go and see Johnny talk to Johnny about it so I took a guitar to Johnny and he and Simon between them made a brand new head for it again lifted out the inlays from the original head but still got the original head in the in the case over this what a mess it was I can show you I'm hanging on to it because he's got the serial number stamped on the back but there you see again there's a splice there yeah you can just about soft John you made new bindings refracted it sorry this is this is just great Johnny but the problem now is that's a brand-new neck on a beaten-up old guitar you're gonna have to refinish the rest of the guitar so I had a NES 355 in 1963 55 which had a sort of watermelon cherry cherry color which was slightly different from the 335 cherry and I said if you can match that that would be fantastic my dream come true which is what he did so this is the kind of watermelon II slightly brighter cherry than the dark cherry you normally see on these guitars and as time went by I got some decent the proper knobs for it and replaced this little coil tap switch there as well which I had in replace oops yeah that's right these are push-pull Japanese pots the poor guy had to resolder the I wouldn't even attempt it yeah he struggled about so difficulties so that's the story of how this guitar came to look the way it is today let us spin forward now to the year 2011 and Andy Partridge sent me an email and he said he said with the youtube link and it was a band called creation who I remembered from 19th from the mid sixties so one of those bands had almost made it massive you know they were like sort of the who the who lights is probably a being of bit behind but that's kinda yep they did they are a real freak beat and they were very big in Germany and he he had a clip of them playing live on on one of these German television shows and Eddie Phillips was the guitar player and he was the first guy to use a violin bow on the guitar and he was into feedback and new sounds and he was all very you know his proper mod big mod freak beach scene and he was you know he had this file name that was his trademark was the violin bow that's where Jimmy Page got idea that I can you know he's he's for his theatrics with it and son it's a sir so Andy had sent this link he said isn't this your guitar and I thinking yeah it sounds like it and then because the Germans you know they look after their film stop don't they they look after their history and they know how to film a band on stage so course soon as Eddie pulls out this violin bow it zooms in tight on the guitar really tight all the marks up here all the scratches in perfect detail and I realized there was that guitar I just destroyed some British rock history thanks Johnny Kincaid it was my fault all along well so anyway that's kind of that's where we are this is Eddie Phillips of the creation this was his guitar though even though it no longer looks like it so I won't be able to cash in on it but I'm not planning to sell it any at any time soon because it is a fantastic instrument the original pickups presumably as far as I know yeah here's here's the remnants of what Eddie or whoever it was destroyed the gift left behind the tuning pegs are original you can see the the truss covers at is that got snapped off some point this was another trademark thing see this pickups around here yeah it's something dropped on the pickup and forced the screw you know yeah obviously you received a lot of punishment and you can see a mark on the pickup cover which were ever hit the pickup threw it down behind the surround so he's got some glue and some aerolite or whatever it was and repaired it that's probably the most identifiable thing that you know that proves beyond a its history as his well that's left on the guitar it's physical you know but anyway it now has a loving owner not someone who's going to brutalize it with an appropriate bowing technique yeah so it sounds like that I'm here with some love oh yeah [Music] [Music] what is that that sounds killer that's that that's just the amp yes the app and the Flint reverb right oh yes yes that sounds nice what um okay you've got an old big muff on there and the double Dave yep I know David tight if you're watching yes I David he's been very generous to all three of us yes in very generous I guess is my main fuss unit the double death so Dave David has these pedals made and he sent them to us where are his the scream pedal left pedal and not only that but he sent them to a Danish Pete Revere afro yeah yeah their captain all our friends and so they Gregory I'm very grateful for that pedal because it's just I think it's based on a fuzz face right and it's got this octave Eider as well so if you want to play the solo from Purple Haze we just press the red button and off you go but it's a really really nice smooth very musical pedal [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Laughter] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] kill us yes a limited appeal that useful to have it there if you need it sounds great I'll tell you what when you were on the neck pickup in the first side mm-hmm with that reverb it was instant cream yeah it really is it's that's kind of because one of the bands that I played with Johnny Worman and his British invaders we do you know though a whole bunch of sixties covers but if I need Eric Clapton or Hendrix yeah just it's just I just leave that as it isn't step on it and it's right there and that'll do it what do you use the well that's more vintage 60s and I know it's a seventies thing I bought that new in 1974 but it still sounds like you know a real yes satisfaction [Music] [Applause] [Music] that's where it all started isn't it crazy or heddles that's where it began and Steve Winwood with [Applause] all of that kind of stuff it's vintage that's what I call a fuzz box yeah that was this icon of thing that like Dave Dee dozy beacon getting church with their whole type that was a big song and I was little when I was growing up just that the football chant thing that [Music] [Applause] that's the stuff but the ds1 now I remember in rehearsal I remember seeing the DSO on your board and I thought it's surely not surely not and then you kicked it on and I'm like I have to now find an old ds1 because it's a wonderful say you use it and solos and things a lot yeah yeah now the only problem I've got with the ds1 is that of all the pedals on this board I can't get enough output Vieira's no matter how I've set it up here I can't get enough out of it but it is a lovely said it's a nice smooth [Music] you still want that nice attack you know he's not it doesn't just you can still [Music] and it's yeah it works really great with p90 pickup right that's fascinating cuz I think it's doing something with the top end of the matchless they're what you mix it yeah yeah I've always been happy with that I've used it for most to be honest I kind of given up with pet one well I joined XTC because you know rock pedals effects wasn't part of what Andy wanted to do well so I more or less thrown them all away and then one day we were mixing the big Express the album we made it in 1984 and the assistant engineer on the session was a guy called Phil thorn Ali I'm still friendly with him focus one last week Phil he had a little amp setup I think he had one of Chris beddings amplifiers that had been left at the studio a track and he had a few boss pedals I thought all these not very pretty I wonder if they do anything useful now he had a ds1 and he had a compressor I think it was cs2 compressor and a little chorus effect and they were affordable at 40 or 50 quid each and that kind of rekindled my interest and Landis as well as the compressor that we like better because he took all the nasty brittle edges off the guitar and just made it more kind of easier to play so we went down to the rock shop in Camden and and bought a bunch of these things and slowly you know it was just it's just every now and again it was useful to have them there particularly as the following Christmas we did the dukes of stratosphere and tired clock so we even though we it was mostly vintage gear we were using most of the distortion units were modern boss pedals and the GS one again it's I've got it set up the way I like it but it'll do a whole bunch more you know you can get that muff sound out a bit just by turning the treble all the way around it's very versatile overdrive thing and used it for an awful lot of things over the years and the the electro-harmonix that we freshmen memory the soul food soul food so this isn't my Christmas present today best Christmas present anyone ever gave me down thank you so much because that's the most useful pedal on this board at the moment I've thumb I'm using a car Rambler amp which is just as a single channel with a switchable Pento triode like the thing but I use it on the pentode thing all the time it's a big clean beautiful to be clean to be sound but you do sometimes need that little extra lift for the crunchy rock-and-roll stuff and that's with that thing really just makes its presence for it's just a nice volume booster that doesn't get too dirty Lauren still you know still plenty of percussion there and it just gives you a bit of edge and energy and it's just fantastic I wouldn't be without it I couldn't actually do a gig without that soulfood pedal oh and it's also the cheapest pedal there you go oh yeah can we hear it into the system yeah [Music] that's the clean channel of the matchless so you can see it's really it's just like having another channel yeah just a dirty channel and you can it's not too painful when you switch it off and go back to the clean it's still you know it doesn't feel alien right it doesn't use you're quite comfortable switching to it and from it very cool how to mention the dinosaur all the compress of the yo TC so once if this is damn Coggins who also works with thorpey now I've been really professional and not turned my phone off guys I'm I can only apologise was that the going that was the doink okay I'm impressed that we've only got one dog so far he's keep its drinking this is what it's doing I haven't turned my phone off either hope no one's calling Andres yeah so Dan Coggins who designed that also was the love tone designer and also now works with our mate thought people pee yes house and Thor Pease give Dan talk is a whole ton yes very good good man and thought he made you this one which was the it's a copy of the burns burns buzzer and that's the one yes and that's real unique oh yes yes it has now this is this is my introduction to 4p I was poking around on on eBay he looking for a buzz around or alone of it because you know it's like I was kind of in the thrall of Robert Fripp I have been for years and years because he does have a very personal individual sound I thought you'd been love to get into that and just sort of just mess because I was now playing as I still have to this day with big big train who a progressive rock incarnate I believe there's a new album come and there is a new album coming out in May it's called the Grand Tour and everyone should have a copy anyway on the road to the Grand Tour I came across this particular pedal and quite by accident really because I know I was poking around and this this guy who was based in Swindon of all places which is where I live making pedals at home and he said I've made this blurbed said well I've got this it's basically based on the design of her the Byrnes buzz around which was the first box that made Robert Fripp so distinctive on those early crimson albums and so I think yeah well maybe it's worth upon darling is about 100 quid I thought had it looked really well made and he seemed to know what he was talking about I'd never heard of this I thought who's who's 4pu can he be in Swindon no can't be anyway this this shows up and sure enough it's beautifully I mean if you think it's we can't really pull it apart here if you look at the work inside it yeah beautifully beautifully soldered and or point-to-point wiring though it was battery had a battery in it when I when I got it and we since you know obviously you more did it for me didn't you Dan somebody modded it for me so I could put it in this board it was certainly and I used it eventually for a solo we play a song called summer now with big with with tin sparest not big big trailer and I set this up on my landing at home because once you know struggling to get the sound right there I was after through through through the pod which is I know we don't mention pods on this show oh that's no use the pot for year is still using it well and so but for this particular CERN I decided I'd pull out the free perfect [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] it's something that needs yes I need to it's just just another overdrive pedal at this stage it could be a need setting up really damn but it is a nice beautiful so a pedal and it's very very it gets really really wild when you turn that sustain knob around to her it just go a bit nuts let's do that okay [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] so it's a hairy little family brilliant killer killer killer um okay um there's one secret weapon we haven't exposed yet that what's that that's the Rangemaster treble booster oh where is it it's hidden below in a different box you made for me Daniel no what no it wasn't me goss made that into yes Pete so this has replaced the implosive yes oh okay and what is fantastic for especially when you're on stage with a prog rock outfit and you've got that big cord at the end of the 15 minute epic and you just want to find that fifth harmonic for that extra you know when the cords ringing and ringing and you just want a little bit of let's just see if I can find it [Music] it'll do that that's what I love about it I found their range by fantasy a friend of mine called Terry Jackson found the Rangemaster treble booster for me when I was a teenager because I was a big lorry Galaga fan okay we're already Gallagher in taste the first time he was my hero as a 17 year old I was completely taken up with everything he did was just fantastic I knew he only had as an AC 30 in a treble bass treble I ain't ask your trade name for it master we're gonna just there's a registered trademark on that from this point that's it yeah yeah time to show you guys out eh s if you're watching this so yeah so I was determined I wanted to you know the Stratocaster and the ac30 all I was all that was missing from my Rory Gallagher kit because I even had the lumberjack shirt and that James was the Rangemaster treble booster and we found one that Jeff Kemp's a shop I think that only about ten pounds there's a lot of money and instantly rubbish as I was I sounded just like Rory and I couldn't play like him but it didn't matter I sounded like him so that's been kind of in my arsenal as it were for a long long time and then I got it got it built into the first box in the 70s I had Dave Luca wires into my big muff and you know because I felt that the muff didn't have enough when I trod on it the volume used to drip drop you know it just used to blur and I couldn't get enough lift so but the Rangemaster in there as well they've tried to fix that problem for a while and then I lost the muff for a few years and eventually it came back from a friend of mine I'd loaned it to and he said well you got something else in there a new ID and I said where's my Rangemaster treble booster I said can you get it out cuz I practice things worth a fortune though I think it'd be something worth worth pursuing with anyway I've got the pedal back he took the took that the circuit I hope it's only a little tight tag board nothing in there yeah yeah at a it's a pot the switch and a tiny tag board and a few resistors and a couple of capacitors I said the original faceplate as well put it that's well it's kind of been yeah that's that's what remains of the original face wire and so he so I got it put back into that little tin box or he I think he put it back in the tin box for me wide it into my board didn't you damn I did so it's nice to have it back on a personal note biggest privilege of my musical life has been with hanging out with you and doing a joy down and thank you for don't you I wouldn't have had my you know if you've rekindled my love of pedals as I'd kind of you know who pood them for many years I was happy you know I had a clean channel and dirty channel that was near enough for me but thanks to you Dan and your brilliant true bypass system that's everything now is usable it's perfectly you know everything sounds great on stage when I'm on stage I don't worry about a damn thing apart from hitting the right pedal the button you know that's this and so that's its you know mutually beneficial thank you so now you so welcome okay guys thank you so much for watching hope you enjoyed that please subscribe if you haven't subscribed also a massive thank you to our preferred retailers in the UK in Europe is and this is music of Guildford Surrey and the US of A would be riff city guitar of various locations and in Australia would be paddle Empire of Brisbane Queensland make sure you check out the description below where Mick does an amazing job of putting in the specific points of things that you might want to see in this video so much longer it'll be the new recruit oh yes yes is going well awesome yeah awesome and finally don't forget to check out that publisher stall calm where you can grab photocopied plans of my stalking diagrams for Dave also t-shirts is the aisle my mug shots yeah hats and t-shirts and all that stuff so again thank you mr. Gregory have a great day guys and we'll see you soon Cheers bye [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause]

Channel: That Pedal Show

Views: 131,714

Keywords: Dave Gregory guitar, XTC guitar, Dave Gregory XTC, Rickenbacker 12 strings, Rickenbacker 12 string, Rickenbacker 1993, Rickenbacker 660, Danelectro 5912, Danelectro 59X12 demo, Danelectro 12 string, Danelectro 12 string demo, Dave Gregory Pedals, Dave Gregory pedalboard, That Pedal Show, interview, musician, guitar player, guitar gear rundown, guitarist

Id: EYVgr7NCYEY

Length: 91min 52sec (5512 seconds)

Published: Fri May 17 2019