James Tyler 25th Anniversary Burning Water £4,999

CONTACT GuitarGuitar PHONE 0800 456 1959 WEB www.tylerguitars.com Words Dave Burrluck Photography Phil Barker

You don’t easily forget James Tyler or one of his exquisite instruments. As one of the fathers of what became known as the ‘Superstrat’, James learned his craft, like so many makers, repairing guitars, specifically for various LA music stores back in the 70s. “I got known pretty quickly by working for pro players,” remembers James. “Then, close by, I rented a place and started up a ’shop. Back then, there were a few companies, like Schecter, making replacement necks and bodies, and players would come to me wanting these assembled into some hot-rod guitar. That’s how I started.”

In the hugely active LA scene of the 80s, Tyler guitars quickly became the choice of studio cats such as Dean Parks, Michael Landau, Steve Watson and Dann Huff. As the 80s progressed, Tyler became known for numerous tweaks and mods, including his active mid-boost, lead/rhythm switching and series/ parallel switching of stacked single coils. Then there was that headstock, conceived after many of his builds with traditional Fender-style headstocks went unnoticed.

By 1987, after years of hot-rodding, he put all his experience into the Studio Elite – and if that wasn’t enough, Tyler developed an, ahem, unusual line in finishing. Initially, there was the Psychedelic Vomit, a ‘joke’ that stuck. “I was painting a candy turquoise over a silver metallic and I fucked up. So while I was sanding it off, it began to look quite good. I added some purple over the silver. Mike Landau saw it and thought it looked cool and suggested other colours. He also wanted a forearm contour that wasn’t on the body. We cut that, leaving bare wood, after the finish was on. Landau played that guitar for many years.”

The most popular of these tongue-in-cheek finishes was the Burning Water, celebrated here with this limited run of 75 pieces only, produced in 2018. It was named after Landau’s band at the time and “it looks like a fire burning over water”.

1 This Burning Water pairs a covered Tyler Angry Retro at the bridge with a pair of Stingray 500 single coils. It’s a very balanced-sounding set: the bridge ’bucker is perfectly voiced, not over-egged but balances clarity with enough power to produce smooth driven tones You can’t miss this headstock, and the upper case multilogos are overlaid with James’s signature: “You’d have thought I’d raped the pope by the reaction I got when I told people I wasn’t going to build guitars with Fender decals any more. Then I took it further and decided to do my own headstock shape. I’d raped the pope again!” The back of the headstock boldly shows off the limited edition number. The tuners are Hipshot’s 18:1 Grip-Lock Open locking style

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5 You don’t forget Tyler’s necks. This one has a full feel with a front-to-back depth of 21.6mm at the 1st fret, 24.7mm at the 12th. It has a wonderful almost V’d shape; in the upper positions, it really doesn’t feel big at all. Another Tyler hallmark is the extreme fingerboardedge rounding – it redefines comfortable Tyler was one of the first makers to put the now industry-standard two-post Gotoh 510 vibrato on the map. Here it uses pressed steel saddles

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