Jeremy Widerman Monster Truck
The Canadian riff dealer loves SGs and TV Yellow, so now he’s found the perfect combination
1
“It’s a 1962 reissue from the Custom Shop. It’s something I gravitated to very early on in my career, at least with Monster Truck. I was picking them up all over Canada and eventually I found the mother of all TV Yellow SGs in Munich; this Custom Shop here that I’ve been using for about four months now. It was sitting on the wall, dusty, because I imagine not many people like a yellow guitar!”
2
“Aside from the TV Yellow colour, being that it’s a Custom Shop guitar I knew that it would be a better sounding guitar overall. But the biggest thing I didn’t expect is the tuning stability. It’s something I think all guitar players can relate to. If your guitar is going out of tune all the time it’s going to throw a hiccup into your show or even your practice schedule when you’re trying to work on something. This guitar stays in tune forever and I don’t know how or why… if it’s the quality of the build at the Custom Shop or the wood. On the chords where you can notice things being out, like an open D chord, it just stays right where you want it the whole time.”
3
“The main thing I like about SGs is they’re light. I do a lot of moving around on stage and it’s about 7.5lbs, whereas the heavier 11 and 12lb Les Pauls can be a bone ache around your neck. I also like that it’s shifted [towards the guitar’s neck] and some people don’t like that as it tends to dip. But once you get over that fact you can get right up at the top end of the fretboard without any trouble at all.”
4
“As far as modifications go, my other two guitars are ’61 non-Custom Shop reissues and I’ve changed virtually everything out of them; the pickups are Sheptone and the machineheads are Sperzel locking to get that tuning stability that was missing from them. I also put a fine-tuner bridge in that Gibson make where you have what you see on a Floyd Rose [bridge]. It’s a really nice way to minutely detune if you’re sharp on a string. But with this guitar, I don’t have that issue so I haven’t done anything to this or the pickups and pots. It’s stock from the Custom Shop with Bumble Bee Capacitors and Burstbucker pickups.” “I basically run my live rig in the studio. On the last record, Sittin’Heavy, I hadn’t got this yet and was using my ’61 reissue. I used it on 90% of the record, and it actually beat out my ’72 SG Deluxe that I used on [2013’s] Furiosity. It was really cool to have a go-to guitar that I could use for the recording process.”