Alex hutchings
TALKS US THROUGH HIS CUSTOM WAGHORN GUITAR
Working in Steven Wilson’s live touring band can be demanding, to say the least – and it calls for a special instrument to make the prog-magic happen. Alex Hutchings stopped by Tom Waghorn’s workshop during our visit and so we took the opportunity to talk about the custom guitars Tom has built for him.
“It started about four years ago. I approached Tom, as he’s here in Bristol where I live, and said to him: ‘If you could make my dream guitar, I’d play that and, if you can’t, I won’t!’ And I actually did say that. So we started on the process, made a prototype guitar and developed it from there. We’re now on our fifth or sixth guitar and I’ve got an eight-string and all the other six-strings. Certain things like a simple chamfer, a shorter horn (on the blue one) for access was important to me because, when you think of a Strat or these other Ibanez-y style guitars I felt, for my posture, I was restricted. So essentially that was a big part of the design – comfort.”
What are the main design attributes of your signature model?
“It’s not too far away from a regular guitar, these are stock pickups in this particular one – I’ve got the Steve Lukather in here. If it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for me, definitely! True Velvet, Air Norton – and that’s it. We’ve got some carbon fibre in the neck so it’s really strong. What I can say is all three of these guitars have been around the world and have done me very well. They’re completely reliable, get them out of the case and they work and they’re solid. I’ve had one drop from a table and, if that had been a Gibson the headstock maybe would have flown off. I think the cable must have been in it and I walked by the table and just saw it go bam!… bam! I picked it up and it was still in tune and I played the gig about an hour later.”
You have an extra fret behind the nut on the top two strings…
“I play in fourths, so it goes E A D G C F, which means I can do octaves, chords, arpeggios… basically everything is symmetrical. When I first did the Steven Wilson gig last August, I had to learn the material for the rehearsal and I learnt it in standard tuning – the whole gig. So I did the rehearsal and it went well, played the music, got some sounds together and that was that. I got back from rehearsal and was thinking, ‘This is so annoying, I didn’t want to play in standard tuning…’ Then I had the idea of a split nut, which basically means I can tune in fourths but the ear doesn’t discriminate.”
So the guitar is in standard tuning, in that the extra fret behind the nut gives you a B and an E, but the first fret on the top two strings are C and F, as they would be in fourths tuning?
“Yes. Without that, it would be completely impossible. But the thing is, I learnt everything in that tuning. I asked Tom, ‘Please, you need to make this tomorrow!’ and he worked meticulously to convert my guitars to this and then I learned it all again, not only in fourths, but in hybrid fourths. So now I play the whole gig in this – I don’t even have a name for it, but let’s call it hybrid fourths. Steven doesn’t even know about all of this – it’s irrelevant. As long as he hears the music and it’s correct, it doesn’t matter. So I’ve learnt it three times, in a way. But I’m comfortable now because any time I’ve got a solo or something, I’m playing in the way that I’m comfortable, in fourths – and I can get my open chords if I need them.”