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Re: Mod ART & Story- Bumblefoot/ Gear / Guitars
http://www.bumblefoot.com/gear.php
0)My First Guitar
When I first started taking guitar lessons, I was told by the music store that it was mandatory to play guitar for 2 years before graduating to an electric. So I had a small-scale nylon-string acoustic, and eventually got a full-size acoustic - here's a pic.
pic taken 1977
(7 years old)
Re: Mod ART & Story- Bumblefoot/ Gear / Guitars
http://www.bumblefoot.com/gear/01-pensive-expenguin.php
1)BAD RONALD "PENSIVE EXPENGUIN" GUITAR
This was my first electric guitar, after I was playing for 2 years in 1978. It was an imitation Les Paul, by a company called "Pace" - I've never seen anything else by the company. It was the cheapest guitar at the music store I was taking guitar lessons at.
(photo taken 1978)
The guitar went through many changes - my friend John had shiny "prism tape" that made colorful reflections - I cut out the shape of the pickguard, forward and reverse, and made a pickguard and reverse-pickguard shape with the tape on the guitar.
Years later I cut away the wood to a strange shape and painted the guitar red. There was a sharp edge in the shape that would bother me when I played. My mom had an old coat with fake fur. I cut up her coat and covered the guitar in fur.
(photo taken August 19, 1986)
A few years after this, the fur was destroyed and had shed all over, and it was time for another change...
As a young child, I would create potions, combining anything I could find. Me and my psychopath friends referred to them as "concoctions." In my backyard, there was a crack in the cement steps near the grass, and there were always ants crawling in and out of the crack. These two key elements in my youth led to my goal in life - to find a way to relocate these ants with one of my special "concoctions." I tried any combination of ingredients that seemed logical - ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, bleach, milk and piss. I'd pour it in the cement cracks and wait. 3 days later, the ants would be crawling in and out, unaffected by my concoction. They obviously had superior strength. I had to try harder - orange juice, spit, baking soda, glass cleaner, glue, shoe polish, and melted crayons. Ya see, the key to knowing a good concoction is the Smell Test. If you smell the concoction in a cup from 4 inches away, you should gag 2 or three times, and then another 2 times from the memory of what you just smelled. If not, you didn't make the shit strong enough. The puke reaction was definitely relative to the amount of onion and garlic powder - mix that with Coca-Cola, some sulfur and other shit from the chemistry set I had (birthday gift), and you're guaranteed 6-and-a-half good dry-heaves - 3 from the actual smell, the third making a genuine hacking sound, another 2 from thinking of the ingredients, and the last one-and-a-half as an instant flashback to the smell, and the hacking sound ya just made replaying in your head. Anyway, back to my story. I had to try harder and I did. I emptied a little bit of everything I could find in the refrigerator, kitchen cabinets, cleaners under the kitchen sink, bathroom sink, and anything I can add from my own person. Yo - who the fuck says "my person" - that's asking for a fight. "The shoehorn is on my person." If you regularly use the term "on my person", hit yourself for me. Anyway again, I combined all that stuff and came up with the greatest batch of concoction I could ever invent. I *knew* this shit was gonna work. I was gagging from 2 feet away. I held that shit far away from me and held my breath and brought it out to the yard, trying not to think of the ingredients so I don't gag another 2 times, and poured it in the cracks.
The ants never came back.
My only mistake was that I never wrote down the ingredients. After that, I reached my height of success and retired from the concoction business. It was time to find a new goal.
I forgot why I was mentioning this story - it had something to do with the guitar. Oh yeah - around 1988 I was forced to come out of concoction retirement, in a quest to find the perfect substance to use when building guitars. I came up with this shit that was perfect - the only side effect was that some of the ingredients would travel up your skin and you'd itch for hours, just from touching your finger to the can of it. The main ingredients were sawdust, fiberglass dust, and epoxy resin. Combine that together and it'll outlive your grandkid's roach collection. I put a layer of the stuff onto the guitar neck after I removed the frets, and then stuck a bunch of coins onto the neck. After it hardened, I filed down the sides of the coins that stuck out, and had $4.63 on the neck. I cut away the body some more, and put the Les Paul-style tailpiece at an angle sticking out of the edge of the body, and wired 1 DiMarzio super-distortion pickup and 1 volume knob onto the body. Then I took an old magazine and put pictures of penguins all over the body, and painted over them with polyurethane. I use a thin rope attached to a tuning peg as the guitar strap, because of the light body that makes the guitar "neck heavy". I then typed on a little piece of paper with my Commodore64 computer's dot-matrix printer, and made a label that said "Bad Ronald - The Pensive Expenguin" and polyurethaned it onto the guitar's head. That's the name of this guitar.
Re: Mod ART & Story- Bumblefoot/ Gear / Guitars
http://www.bumblefoot.com/gear/02-the-artist.php
2) - THE ARTIST
By age 10 and 11 I was doing alot of cover gigs doing Rush, the Rolling Stones, Ramones, Pink Floyd, the Cars, Billy Joel - needed a good guitar. This was my first good guitar - an Ibanez Artist AR50BK. Bought it on my 11th birthday, September 25th, 1980. 
(pic taken Aug 14th, 1981)
I was into guitarists like Ace Frehley and Angus Young. Then I turned 12 and had heard Eddie Van Halen for the first time. It was the first time I heard anything that required a vibrato bar - that was the only thing missing from this guitar. I'd compensate by doing shit with the tuning pegs - for the deep bends in Eruption, I'd detune the low-E string and then tune it back up, stuff like that. That shit wasn't gonna cut it - I needed a bar.
I found a company that made something called a " Bowen Handle" (photo on right) - it was a vibrato bar that attached in place of the tailpiece (made for Gibson-type setups - separate bridge and tailpiece) I put it on but it wasn't very effective. (This led to me getting my next guitar, a Fender Stratocaster...)
Eventually I put a Floyd Rose vibrato bar on there around '88. I chipped off the paint and sanded down the body to the bare wood. Then I took a half-inch wood chisel and started scraping shapes into the body. I took whatever happened during the time I was scraping the body and carved it into the wood. Watching Star Trek, hanging with nekkid girls, giving someone the Awol album (my old band's album...) I was working on the Pensive Expenguin guitar around this time and carved a penguin into the body. I was doing some painting and carved an artist into the body. I cut off my armpit hair and used it for the facial hair on the artist's face - polyurethaned it on there.
The hippie-looking guy on the top left was a self-portrait. The babies represented vulnerable parts of yourself. The angel baby was next to the self-portrait to connect the peace and comfort I felt when I was by myself. Also nearby were the penguin (representing building guitars, something that gave me a positive purpose), and Spock (representing watching old Star Trek's - something that entertained me as opposed to always having to be the one who entertains others...) The angel baby was centered between the smiling self-portrait and the emotionless Spock, with guitar-stuff above to keep me balanced.
Directly under the guitar-strings was the other part of me - the baby in the guillotine. The one who entertained, and was at the front line of being judged and punished by how people see you. When people judge, they're taking what they feel they're lacking in themselves, embodying it all as you, and then attack the object. It's always some weak self-pity shit where they self-project the worst traits they have. Fuck 'em. Two ways to go from there - to the right, where there were a bunch of fingerprints representing the true identity, the real you. Or to the left - the devil baby. Why a baby? Humility. I was 18 and in the baby stages of finding who I was, trying not to be scarred by obstacles.
Re: Mod ART & Story- Bumblefoot/ Gear / Guitars
3) - THE MUTANT COW
OK, so I had the LesPaul rip-off and the Ibanez Artist, but nothing I could play Van Halen on. This was the early 80's and not alot of guitar companies were putting out guitars with Floyd Rose or Kahler vibrato bars on them that I knew of, so for my 13th birthday I got a '57 Fender Stratocaster re-issue.
(photo taken Oct 30th, 1982)
I was psyched. It was a beautiful guitar. But the pickups squealed and had no sustain, and every time I touched the vibrato bar, the guitar would go out of tune. The fretboard was all glossy and curved, and it just didn't feel right. In the other 2 guitars I'd put in DiMarzio Super-Distortion pickups, so the first renovation I made on this guitar was to chisel away the wood around the bridge pickup and put one in there. Over the next few years, I earned money re-wiring people's guitars and gathered alot of extra junk. Ya know, junk is only junk to someone that has no use for the stuff. Eventually I replaced the old nut with a locking nut.
I always loved "B" movies. Low-budget horror movies and weird stuff. Check out the movie Gummo. I remember when I saw the movie "The Funhouse" with my friends, we were about 11 or 12 - back when kids could get into movie theaters without having to be 17 and shit. One kid sat through the whole movie with his hands over his eyes saying "Tell me when it's over..." - that kid was always taking the fun out of stuff. We'd be in the pool and he'd be clinging to the edge for dear life and wouldn't let go. (we're talking a small above-ground pool where the water's up to your chest when ya stand up) - if ya suggested that he try walking to the middle of the pool he'd panic and say "I gotta go home" and scurry out of the pool and run home. Real hard to stay friends with the kid, which sucked cause we had alot of common interests.
I remember when we were 15 I tried to hook him up with this cute girl - we were all hangin' in my basement and I said something funny. As he laughed, his ass laughed too and busted out this phat trombone hit. His face turned blue-ish white and he lowered his head and covered his face with his hands (kinda like when he was at the movies covering his face 4 years earlier) He must have sat like that for a good ten minutes. Probably the longest ten minutes of his life.
Jump ahead to late 1987. One of the scenes in "The Funhouse" stuck in my head, when the kids were checking out the freak show - they were lookin' at this cow, the cow turned its head and there was a second small mutated head growing off it. The Stratocaster would be my interpretation of that cow. I took a bass neck, pulled off the frets and cut the neck across at the 7th fret. I re-fretted the small neck with a spacing similar to a guitar's starting at the 12th fret. I put guitar tuners on the top of the neck and a locking nut. I bored out a section of the Stratocaster's body and attached the neck, and cut away wood to attach a pickup and a Badass bridge, set at the proper distance from the neck so the frets would intonate properly at 1-octave higher than a standard guitar (the strings on the little neck were tuned an octave higher.) I wired in a 3-way toggle switch to select either or both necks, and cut a whole straight through the body where the old input jack was, just for the fuck of it. Painted the guitar red on the front, blue on the back, and set a gold watch-on-a-chain into the body.
My fondest memory of this guitar was when I played with my old cover band "Leonard Nimoy." We played Aerosmith, AC/DC, Kiss, Scorpions, 70's covers... The drummer was great - he was real heavy, and at the end of every song he'd fall back into his chair exhausted, covered in sweat like he just ran a marathon. The other guitarist was a bit heavy too and would roll around the floor on his stomach. Funny band. We just didn't give a fuck. We'd put up flyers around High Schools advertising the band - the name "Leonard Nimoy" written in Star Trek lettering to make people think Spock was making an appearance somewhere, followed by a personal ad from a swingers magazine of a naked fat woman bent over showin' her shit, with a written description of her measurements and what she's looking for in a partner. Always a different ad for each gig, but they always loved anal.
At one gig in Brooklyn at L'Amour, it was the end of the show and I bent the highest note on the little neck and kept holding it, making it scream. It was so piercing and everyone in the audience held their ears in pain. So I just kept on ringing it out. And they kept holding their ears. Must have gone on for a good ten minutes - probably the longest ten minutes ever spent at L'Amour. I was such a dick. It was the 80's - everyone was a dick.
Re: Mod ART & Story- Bumblefoot/ Gear / Guitars
http://www.bumblefoot.com/gear/04-swiss … guitar.php
4) - THE SWISS CHEESE GUITAR
I started working at age 12 painting album covers on the backs of dungaree jackets for $20 each (most people asked for Iron Maiden's first album or Killers) Ibanez just came out with the Roadstar series of guitars, which were Stratocaster copies with a better vibrato bar on 'em. When I was 14 I saved up enough money to get one selling at the store I took lessons at - the wood was cracked, it was last year's model, it was $180. It was a 1983 Ibanez Roadstar RS135BK (bought it July 3rd, 1984) First thing I did when I brought it home was pry the paint off it and sand it down to the wood.
(pic taken Feb 16th, 1985)
This is another guitar that went through alot of changes. Put a humbucker by the bridge. At one point I hung old skeleton keys all over the guitar - made the guitar too heavy. I left it as is for a while. Put a Floyd vibrato and a locking nut on it eventually. I wanted to make the guitar look like someone took a big bite out of the body. My dad had a bunch of drill bits - I drilled away the wood where ya rest your picking arm, and in the end it looked like shit. So I kept on drilling and eventually it looked like Swiss cheese. I went to an auto paint store with a slice of Swiss cheese and told them I need to match that color. They hooked me up and I painted it yellow. In the early 90s, DiMarzio re-wired the guitar for me, with a Chopper pickup by the neck and a Tone Zone by the bridge. They put in a single volume knob and a 5-way toggle switch - 1) bridge pickup, 2) bridge pickup as a single-coil, 3) both pickups, 4) both pickups out of phase, 5) neck pickup.
This was my main guitar until I hooked up with Vigier in '97. When Vigier built the "Bumblefoot" guitar, I laid the cheese guitar to permanent rest.
Re: Mod ART & Story- Bumblefoot/ Gear / Guitars
http://www.bumblefoot.com/gear/05-hand-guitar.php
5) - THE HAND GUITAR
A friend named Tom Cannalonga built guitars and had a business called "Custom Ax". I gave him some guitar equipment and in exchange, he did the building of this guitar. I traced my hand on grid paper to use as a guide and we expanded the scale to the size of the guitar body. Tom used mandolin frets and made a neck extension going up to the 37th fret. He pinned a moth under glass - still can't figure out why the thing hasn't turned into dust yet. When my little cousin Valerie asked me if she could paint the fingernails (she was about 5 at the time) I couldn't say no. I left the nail polish on the guitar to always remind me of my little cousin that I love so much. (She's not so little anymore - she's in her 20's and about 5'10")
Tom Cannalonga is an amazing guy. He expanded his guitar-building gift into making sports equipment and accessories for people with physical challenges - check out his website...
www.sitski.com
Re: Mod ART & Story- Bumblefoot/ Gear / Guitars
http://www.bumblefoot.com/gear/06-les-paul-reissue.php
5) - '59 GIBSON LES PAUL REISSUE
Won this guitar in a guitar contest in April '89. It's the main guitar I used on tour with Guns N' Roses in 2006.
Re: Mod ART & Story- Bumblefoot/ Gear / Guitars
http://www.bumblefoot.com/gear/06-5-goy … oustic.php
6.5) GOYA STEEL-STRING ACOUSTIC
I bought this guitar in 1991. This guitar doesn't count as a full listing because it wasn't destined to survive. I brought the guitar to the school I taught at and it would constantly get knocked to the ground. Eventually the headstock split in half. I glued it back together, and used it on the Adventures, Hermit, and Hands CDs. Then one day a friend bumped into it in the studio and it hit the ground and snapped in the same place. I didn't bother fixing it.
It was going to be immortalized in the artwork for the "Guitars Suck" CD, but that didn't happen when the CD became "9.11" - here's the final photo of the Goya acoustic, taken August 2001...
Re: Mod ART & Story- Bumblefoot/ Gear / Guitars
http://www.bumblefoot.com/gear/07-vigier-excalibur.php
7) VIGIER EXCALIBUR
On my first French tour in February '97, the people at Vigier guitars came to a show and gave me a guitar to try. I did the show with the guitar and it played great. When I returned in May, we had dinner and threw ideas around. I told them how I had always built my own guitars, and we should come up with something special - something to replace the Swiss Cheese guitar as my main guitar. We signed an endorsement agreement and began planning the Bumblefoot guitar.
Vigier gave me an Excalibur guitar to take home. When I was recording the first version of Uncool in 1999, I bought a Roland guitar synth and installed the pickup onto this guitar, and used it on the Uncool tours in 2001.
Re: Mod ART & Story- Bumblefoot/ Gear / Guitars
http://www.bumblefoot.com/gear/08-vigie … guitar.php
8) VIGIER "FLYING FOOT" GUITAR
Vigier spent 5 months building this guitar by hand - it's truly a masterpiece. Incredible detail on the guitar, down to the toenails. When you bend down the vibrato bar, wings pop out of the sides. They gave me this guitar at the NAMM convention in Los Angeles, January 1998. Plays and sounds the best of all my guitars - it's my main guitar.
It has one push/pull volume knob, that switches the humbuckers into single-coils, and a 3-way toggle switch to select pickups. DiMarzio pickups - Tone Zone at the bridge, Chopper at the neck.
This guitar gets some funny reactions. At the airport when it goes through the X-ray machine, it's always the same confused look - you'd think airport security never saw a bag with a giant electronic foot in it. At NAMM shows, kids always laugh at the guitar - then I open the wings and they really laugh. If something makes kids laugh, keep it. Example - my car. I have this old Hyundai Excel with 140,000 miles on it. Those cars are great - they last forever and barely use any gas - it's my second Hyundai Excel. I drove my first Hyundai into the ground - I bought it from this slimebag who put the wrong brakes on the car just so it would appear sellable. So one night I'm driving home with my girl at 2am from Long Island and BAM! there's a trail of car parts on the road behind me and I have no brakes. Luckily it happened 2 miles from my house on an empty road, going slightly uphill. I had just driven 70 miles at 70 miles an hour and by the grace of God it happened when it did. I had the car towed to a shop where they showed me what happened, how the guy cut away parts of brakes from another car to make them fit in my Hyundai and how it was a matter of time before they fell out. I went back to the guy that sold me the car and he offered me $100 to go away. All I wanted was for him to pay my $500 bill for getting new brakes. He wouldn't, so I sued the piece of shit and got my money. I never forgot it, and often thought about going back for the slimebag, but didn't bother. It's best when ya sit back and watch nature do its thing - karma will take care of him.
I used that car to drive 500 miles and back to North Carolina where my girlfriend was going to vet school, about a dozen times. I'd finish giving guitar lessons Friday 10:30 at night, drive for 9 hours, spend the weekend with her, and when she left for school Monday morning, I'd leave for NYC and drive straight to the music institute Monday afternoon and start teaching. The school was knocked down and replaced by a McDonald's a few years ago. Don't hate McDonald's. They started as one man's small business, and are an example of what one person can achieve if they try. They feed people and give people jobs, and donate a bigger percentage of their income than most people that hate them do. Wendy's spicy chicken burgers are my shit tho.
Back to the car, it reached a point where I couldn't make it up a hill, and actually started rolling backwards when I tried. So I parted with my red Hyundai and got a gray Mercury Topaz. That car was good too, but every fuckin' week a cop would pull me over and give me a ticket for whatever they could. After that car died I got another Hyundai Excel, the one I have now. When we were filming the T-Jonez video, we needed some more footage. We filmed a wrestling match on Frank's bed [Bumblefoot bassist 2000/2001] between me and 3 curvy ladies, we filmed Olivia [Bumblefoot drummer 2000/2001] beating up some streetwalkers with a garbage can, and filmed a big intro where the car pulls up to a club, the band gets out of the car and walks up the red carpet while a roped-in crowd cheers us on. So I painted my Hyundai green and orange swirls for the film shoot, *assuming* the next heavy rain would wash away the paint. It didn't. The car also had zebra window-shades, cow-print seat covers, fuzzy dice hangin' off the mirror, strings of gold beads hanging across the windows, and a big rotating lit-up disco ball on the top. My car is still green and yellow with the cow seats. It makes kids laugh when I drive by. So I keep it. Turns out we didn't even use any of the footage.
Usually at NAMM shows, after days of noise and staying at the booth I get a little "anxious". So I turn the amp up loud, step into the middle of the aisle where people are walking and do a spontaneous "guitar solo" where I start twisting violently on the floor making horrible noises with the wings flapping on the guitar, legs in the air, and a crowd of bystanders scratching their heads. Fuck 'em if they can't appreciate performance art.
