Bought & Sold
Tele maestro and member of The Little Willies with Norah Jones, Jim reflects on some trading experiences…
What was the last guitar you bought and why?
“I bought a 1956 Fender Duo-Sonic. I bought it because Luca Benedetti, the guy I play with frequently in Honeyfingers, came over with one and I just fell in love with it. The neck was like this perfect C shape. I mean, it’s a smaller scale, but that said, it just kissed your left hand. And the bevel, where the fingerboard curves on the top and bottom, is so lovely. Not to mention the Desert Sand paint job and the gold anodised pickguard, and somehow the silver volume and tone knobs look perfect. The middle position is just an amazing-sounding configuration. Honestly, the front and back pickups by themselves are wonderfully crappy – real low-fidelity – but that middle position… all of a sudden it’s a great jazz sound. So I bought one on Reverb, I think it was about $2,000 – still a really affordable vintage instrument.”
What was the first serious guitar you bought with your own money?
“It was a Gibson 330 and it was 300 bucks. It was, I guess, around 1975. I played a borrowed Tiesco for a couple of years and, literally, my right hand would bleed after I played it, because where the bridge was, there were these two screws sticking up and, you know, I was a teenager and very passionate about music and I pressed my right hand down on the guitar and I wouldn’t notice, but there’d be blood. My parents helped, but I got a Gibson 330 and I sold it, I don’t know, 10 or 12 years after that. It was back in the day where I was struggling and I think I sold it for rent or some awful reason.”
What’s your best guitar-buying tip?
“Well, I mean, I don’t know. I look to see if the guitar has been played; that’s a real bonus. You know, fingerboard wear and if the pickguard looks like somebody was flailing away. And if a guitar is played, to me, that’s a real good sign. The other thing is how does it sound when it’s not plugged in? I mean, a solidbody – what does it sound like acoustically? Those are kind of the two obvious things I look for. I’ll play the whole thing, for sure, meaning that I might run some arpeggios from the 1st fret to the 12th and I would bend the G on the 15th fret up b to the B and see what happens. If it frets out, which they do a lot… I mean, it’s kind of difficult sometimes to get that. So if it frets out, then why? Is it the setup? Do the frets need milling, or whatever the word is? Bend it up in the higher register, just to see if it’s speaking or not.”
"Quit putting bells and whistles on [guitars]… I feel it takes the guitar out of my hands"
What’s the strongest case of buyer’s remorse you’ve had?
“For some reason, back in the 80s, I got this Hamer and I don’t know why it was, it just seemed like a good idea at the music store. I was at Guitar Center and I brought it home and instantly didn’t like it, so I brought it back and got my money back. The other thing was a Gibson Lab Series amp, again in the 80s when I was young and still, you know, very, very curious. I think it had a compression thing on it and it seemed like a really good idea at the time. But I think I returned that and got my money back, too.”
Have you ever sold a guitar that you now intensely regret letting go?
“Oh, yeah. That Gibson 330 and I had a ’54 Les Paul with the single-coil pickups that I sold for 800 bucks. I had a red Silvertone with the amp in the case – really cool –
and what made me feel really bad is that a lovely friend gave it to me and I really liked it, but I wanted to get an acoustic. I don’t know what I was thinking. And I got this Yamaha acoustic with mostly the money I made selling the guitar. And I looked back and it was kind of betraying my friend’s generosity. I was a stupid kid, you know, a stupid teenager, like 15 years old. Those are the three.”
Are there any common design features on electric guitars that are an instant turn-off for you when you’re auditioning a potential new guitar?
“Yeah, anything that’s a modification. I don’t like push-pull tone controls, I don’t like Lace Sensor pickups, I just think that Leo Fender got it right. Quit putting bells and whistles on it, those things annoy me, I feel it takes the guitar out of my hands – like those potentiometers that ‘add tone as you turn them down’. Somebody thought of that and was really proud of themselves. It sounds good on paper, but it’s like, ‘Why? I’ll just do it myself – and maybe I don’t want my tone to increase when I turn down.’Actually, I really don’t want it to. That’s just a deal-breaker.”
When was the last time you stopped to stare in a guitar shop window and what were you looking at?
“You know, it was about maybe two months ago and I was looking at these little lap steels. I can’t remember what brand they were, but they were not Fender. There were these beautiful little lap steels with probably pokercard emblems on the fingerboard to indicate the fret.
I can’t remember specifically, but there were a few of them and I was really thinking I would love to have one of those and learn to play it, you know? It was at Southside Guitars in Brooklyn.”
If you were forced to make a choice, would you rather buy a really good guitar and a cheap amp or would you prefer to have a cheap guitar and a really top-notch amp?
“Cheap guitar, top-notch amp, assuming it plays in tune. If a guitar plays in tune, no problem; I’d enjoy the cheapness of it. I mean, even in the context of our interview, the Duo-Sonic: the bridge pickup, like I said, it sounds kinda cheap. But, man, it sounds great and if you play it through an amp that has some oomph – it’s wonderfully idiosyncratic and has a unique voice.”
If you could only use humbuckers or single coils for the rest of your life, which one would you choose and why?
“Oh, boy, big mystery. I have never, ever owned a humbucking guitar. Other than that Hamer, which I owned for about three hours. And I have been playing guitar, I think, for 47 years. I’m not saying they’re bad, but even my Les Paul had single coils. So yeah, single coil.”