The 3rd Electric Guitar—Gibson ES-5 Switchmaster
I got a chance to write some music for a movie and actually earned something doing that. With the money I got from the film job I bought a Gibson ES-5 Switchmaster, which I used for about five years. I recorded the first three albums with that guitar. [...] It was called Run Home Slow.
The first guitar I owned was an
ES5 Switchmaster which is a big fat jazz guitar and I had that spiffed
up. It's got a Barcus Berry on the bridge and one of those Seismic
Sensors on the pole-piece and three pickups in it and a quad output.
It's got its own power supply to run everything—it's better than
changing batteries.
To me, Frank was one of the most exciting musicians I've known, because he went beyond being a musician. When I first met him, he said he was interested in playing guitar, and asked me what was the most expensive guitar, and I told him that the most expensive one was a Gibson ES-5, like the one I had, so he went out and bought one.
[The Fender Jazzmaster] got repossessed, but then I made some money by writing music for a film, so I went out and bough a Gibson ES-5 Switchmaster, one of those big fat hollow-body jobs with three pickups on it. I used to really like that guitar; it had a nice neck on it, but there was a real problem with uncontrollable feedback whenever I needed more amplification for larger halls. That's common for hollow-bodies.
When I first started playing, I had a hollowbody Gibson ES-5 Switchmaster. They really feed back. I always liked the sound of that guitar, but when we started working larger halls, and the feedback problem got to be bad, people said, "Stuff it with foam and it won't feed back." But I didn't want to destroy the sound of the guitar, so that's when I switched over to a solidbody instrument.
[c. Summer-Autumn, 1965]
The Mothers, Whisky à Go-Go, c. November 1965
[Ray Collins, vocals; FZ, Gibson ES-5 Switchmaster; Roy Estrada, bass]
Richard Avedon session, 1966
[Claudia Cardinale; FZ, Gibson ES-5 Switchmaster]
[Carl Franzoni; Claudia Cardinale; Elliot Ingber, Danelectro Bellzouki; FZ, Gibson ES-5 Switchmaster]
8404 Kirkwood Session, 1966
[unidentified hand with Danelectro Bellzouki; Elliot Ingber, Gibson ES-5 Switchmaster; FZ, Rickenbacker 450; Claudia Salter; JCB; unidentified girl #3; old f-hole acoustic (on the wall); Carl Franzoni, unidentified guitar; Roy Estrada]
[Elliot Ingber, Gibson ES-5 Switchmaster; Claudia Salter; unidentified girl #1; FZ, Rickenbacker 450; JCB; unidentified girl #3]
Anthony Binsacca, January 11, 2019
I just wanted to identify the guitar that [was formerly] listed as "unidentified guitar" It is definitely a Rickenbacker 450 in mapleglow.
When we started touring he had
me playing that big L5 switchmaster. The BIG SUCKER.
Ike Willis, interviewed by AJ Abrams, Jam Bands, March 2000
I also
played [...] his L5 Switchmaster.
Hendrix Strat
Zappa takes great pains to preserve as much of the continuity as he can, recording all his performances in quadraphonic sound, and filming them whenever possible. Though the walls of Zappa's workroom are covered with remarkable artworks and artifacts (including the remains of the guitar Jimi Hendrix burned at the Monterey Pop Festival), the most prominent features of the place (aside from the equipment) are five-foot stacks of tapes and huge racks of movie film.
Another one of my Strats is the one Hendrix burned at the Miami Pop Festival; it was given to me by this guy who used to be his roadie. I had it hanging on the wall in my basement for years until last year when I gave it to Rex and said, "Put this sucker back together," because it was all tore up. The neck was cracked off, the body was all fired, and the pickups were blistered and bubbled. That's the one that's got the Barcus-Berry in the neck. A lot of people thought I had Hendrix's guitar from Monterey, but it was from Miami; the one at Monterey was white and this one is sunburst.
[...] I don't even have a vibrato arm on the Hendrix Strat. You can hear it on Zoot Allures.
What you have to do is match resonances of the instrument to the type of pickup that's on there and it takes some experimenting around to get the sound you want to hear. For instance, on my Hendrix Strat I have a Dan Armstrong in the front position, I have a Seymour Duncan Strat pickup in the middle position, and a Carvin in the rear position. On another blond Strat there's an EMG, a Carvin, and a Dan Armstrong, and on my Les Paul I have a Carvin and a Dan Armstrong. And on my SG I have a DiMarzio and an EMG. The EMG is wired up in a way they were never intended to be used; normally they're a real clean, clear pickup but if you hook them up the wrong way . . .
Do you have top five favorites?
[...] And the Hendrix Strat, which has a special size neck on it. It's an SG-size neck. It does certain things that other guitars won't do. The width and depth of the neck is different from that of a Strat, so you can do all kinds of things that just don't feel right on another guitar.
How did you come to own the fire-damaged ex-Jimi Hendrix Strat?
There was this guy Howard Parker—they called him 'H'—who was Hendrix's roadie, gofer and general assistant. He stayed at our house for a couple of months in the late '60s, and he had this guitar which Hendrix had given to him—I thought it was from the Miami concert. He gave it to me and we had it hanging on the wall as a decoration for years and years and then I met some guys who were capable of putting guitars back together, so I had it done.
Does it have an individual sound?
Yes, it did have a sound all its own, especially after it was reconstructed, but that sound was not what you would expect from the Hendrix guitar. It didn't sound like all the Hendrix guitar solos you've ever heard.
It's had pickup transformations as well, hasn't it?
Yeah, it used to have a chrome scratchplate and it had, I think, at that time a Barcus Berry in the neck and also a preamp . . .
Ike Willis, interviewed by AJ Abrams, Jam Bands, March 2000
I played a burned up Strat that Jimi had set fire to in Miami. That
guitar was once on the cover of Guitar Player magazine. I also
played Hendrix' Fender Jaguar on tour and his L5 Switchmaster. One
guy that Frank loved was Jimi and Frank was nice enough to let me
dig into some of that magic. My first year and half I used nothing
but Hendrix guitars, which was wonderful.
What Frank did was he gave me all the guitars that Hendrix used to use when they use to jam together. When Frank was based in NY and he was playing all those shows at The Garrick Theatre. [...] At first it was the L5 Switchmaster. The Hendrix Strat and then a blue Fender Jaguar that he used to jam on too. So on my first tour I was playing on nothing but Hendrix guitars.
Dweezil Zappa, "Like Father, Like Munchkins," Zappa! 1992, p. 20
I found a Jimi Hendrix guitar not even in a case, with Anvil cases sitting on top of it and collecting dust under the stairs down under the studio. It looked like somebody raped it and left it to die. I told Frank I'd like to rebuild it. He said, "You can have it." I said, "Yeah!" So I had it rebuilt, and the guitar was reborn. It's like the third generation now: Jimi's, then Frank's, then mine.
After my audition to join Frank's band we were standing around and he asked if I had any questions—I said, "Yeh—can I hold that guitar for a minute?"
In 1978 [September 15] We played Miami—and it was the first time I had ever seen FZ bring that guitar out for a show—before that he had been playing the imitation SG—anyway—that nite was amazing—especially for what was coming out of the guitar—long, beautiful sustained feedback—textures, etc—very unlike Frank at that time—or any time—it wasn;t particularly aggressive—but it was strong and different. Frank never brought it out again for the who tour. I think Jimi was glad to see it.
Caesar Glebbeek, "Gear Special: Strat Burning Down . . .," UniVibes #27, December 1997
It was also here in Florida that Frank Zappa obtained the remains of not one but two Hendrix Stratocaster guitars.
[...] Frank Zappa mentioned his so-called Hendrix Strat: "Another one of my Strats is the one Hendrix burned at the Miami Pop Festival; it was given to me by this guy who used to be his roadie. I had it hanging on the wall in my basement for years until last year when I gave it to Rex [Bogue] and said, 'Put this sucker back together,' because it was all tore up. The neck was cracked off, the body was all fired, and the pickups were blistered and bubbled. [...] A lot of people thought I had Hendrix' guitar from Monterey, but it was from Miami; the one at Monterey was white, and this one is sunburst . . . [...]" (Guitar Player, January 1977, p. 25).
[...] Hendrix researcher Michael Fairchild [...] put forth an interesting theory in his article 'The Ultimate Hendrix Gear Guide/Part 2' for Guitar Shop magazine (issue #4, Winter 1995, p. 60): that the burned Hendrix Strat owned by Frank Zappa "must be" the Strat Jimi burned at "The Astoria" in London, back on 31 March 1967, since Jimi didn't burn any guitar at the pop festival in Hallandale, Florida, on 18 May 1968. [...]
UniVibes subscriber Doug Anderson recently informed me about a meeting which took place in his amplifier repair shop, the "Tone Zone" in Los Angeles, with guitarist Dweezil Zappa, son of Frank Zappa: "Dweezil came to my shop in April 1997 with his father's so-called burned Hendrix Strat. Dweezil told me that he thought that a Hendrix roadie gave his father the burned Strat plus another Strat neck at the same time at the 'Miami Pop Festival' in May 1968. The roadie just threw the neck in because it might be repairable."
So now we have one burned Strat body; plus two Strat necks—the burned Strat neck which originally belonged to the burned Strat, and a second Strat neck, which nowadays in is a bad (rotten) state.
[...] The burned "Astoria" neck is currently owned by guitarist Bobby Robles from Los Angeles. Robles was a friend and client of the late Rex Bogue, who passed away in February 1996.
[...] The rotted Strat neck was discovered in mid 1996 by Dweezil Zappa, when he found it stored in an open plastic bag under the outside stairs of his father's garage in Los Angeles. The neck had received a lot of moisture over the years and had started to rot away. Shortly afterwards, Dweezil had one of his custom Iceman guitars painted by Dan Lawrence. Dweezil was so pleased with his work that he made a gift to Dan—a rotted Strat neck, which once belonged to Jimi Hendrix.
UniVibes #56, April 2008
The burned Astoria [London, March 31, 1967] Strat remains ended up with roadie Howard Parker (a.k.a. "H"), who later (sometime in 1968) gave it to Frank Zappa. After "H" was fired by the JHE management he worked for Zappa as roadie until sometime in 1969 (he then returned to the UK). "H" can be seen on stage with Jimi Hendrix at the Isle of Wight show, 30 August 1970. "H" died at sea in 1974 and his body was never found . . .
Fretless Acoustic
Do you ever play slide guitar?
No, but I do have a fretless guitar, and I'm pretty good on that. At one time Acoustic manufactured a fretless guitar, they made a prototype and tried to interest people in it, but nobody wanted it. So the prototype ended up at Guitar Center. I walked in there one day and asked them if they had anything new, and they said, "Have we got one for you!" And they brought out this thing, and it was really neat, so I bought it for $75. The only restriction was they had to take a chisel and some black paint and scratch off the word "Acoustic" on the headpiece, because Acoustic didn't want anybody to know that they had made such a grievous error as to make a fretless guitar. I've put a Barcus-Berry on that, too, and I send the magnetic pickup to the left and the Barcus on the right. The thing that sounds like a slide guitar on "The Torture Never Stops" is actually a fretless. It's also on "San Ber'dino" and "Can't Afford No Shoes" [both from One Size Fits All]. It's different than a regular guitar; you don't push the strings to bend them, you move them back and forth like violin-type vibrato, which is a funny movement to get used to. But you can play barre chords on it—it's fun.
M.I.: What will be your main guitar the next time you're on tour?
Zappa: It's probably going to be a toss-up between the Les Paul and maybe an Acoustic Black Widow that I had souped up. It's got a 24-fret rosewood neck, and I had two EMG pickups put in it, and new fret work by Carruthers.
FRIENDLY LITTLE FINGER
1975 recorded in a dressing room at Hofstra University and over-dubbed at the Record Plant, Los Angeles, California
[...]
guitars: Gibson acoustic-electric, Custom fretless, Hofner bass
[...]
DOWN IN DE DEW
1975 recorded at Paramount Studios, Hollywood, California
[...]
guitars: Gibson acoustic-electric. Custom fretless. Hofner bass
[...] This selection was an out-take from the "APOSTROPHE" album. Another example of fretless guitar soloing can be heard on the song 'San Ber'dino' in the "ONE SIZE FITS ALL" album. Unfortunately, the fretless guitar was stolen several years ago.
1975—Custom SG
[In May 1975] a guy showed up at a concert in Phoenix with a homemade version of an SG, with a 23-fret neck, special inlays and stuff. I bought that from him and started using it shortly thereafter.
At the [London, February 1977] gig I saw Frank was playing an SG-shaped instrument—was it an SG?
"It's not really an SG, it's a homemade guitar. I bought it from a kid in Arizona, he brought it around after a show, about four or five years ago."
There was an SG pictured on the cover of his live "Roxy and Elsewhere" album, was it the same guitar?
"No. That is an SG, but a different one. Both of them have shaved necks, but the Roxy cover one is my favourite, but there are some problems with that; the neck's been shaved so much that it's hard to keep it in tune, it flaps around like a piece of cardboard. This SG that I was playing here has one extra fret, going up higher than a normal SG, so it means that all the rest of the fret scaling is a little bit tighter. But it's got an ebony fingerboard, which I find nicer. I bought the other SG (the Roxy cover one) second-hand, and it 's really good. The frets were all beat up on it, it was broken in just right.
"Both the guitars I'm using now have 12-volt bi-polar pre-amps, and plus or minus 20dB volume and tone controls as well as different ranges for the EQ's—like the treble control's got a switch selector which gives you one of two ranges, the bass has a similar range selector, and there's a pick-up splitter switch that'll change it from humbucking to a single-coil, along with a phasing switch on it that gives you some really whistling harmonics."
As well as the SG's, Frank has a stack of other guitars, including three Strats.
"Each one of the Strats is wired differently," explained Frank, "one of them, for example, has a Barcus Berry at the end of the neck, which means that if I hammer notes on the neck, it's picked up as part of the picking sound. It also has a special pick-up that was made by Rex Bogue—he was the guy that made that double-necked monstrosity for McLaughlin—he does most of the work on my guitars. I also have Martin, Guild and Gibson acoustics, I've got a bouzouki and a sitar, and two Acoustic Black Widows, made by the Acoustic Control Corporation, one of which has a special pick-up shaped like loops for the strings to go under, similar to what they use on the Condor. I've also got a Hofner bass, a Rickenbacker 12-string and a Fender 12-string, both of which are a little tweezed, and I have a Gibson Switchmaster."
Do you have top five favorites?
[...] The fifth guitar would be the SG copy that I got from this guy in Phoenix, Arizona. It says "Gibson" on it, but it's handmade, and it's got an ebony fretboard with 23 frets on it; it goes one fret higher than a normal SG. I play that a lot.
The "Baby Snakes" SG was Zappa's main guitar for the latter part of the Seventies. The guitar is not actually a Gibson but rather the creation of "a guy in Phoenix," who made his way backstage and sold the guitar to Zappa for $500.
Custom Stratocaster
Since 1982, Frank Zappa has been playing a Fender Stratocaster customized by Performance Guitars of Los Angeles. Neither Zappa nor Performance's Bob McDonald can pinpoint the year of the alder body, though McDonald estimates it's from the 1960s. "The neck is one of ours," he says, "very thin with a flat back and a very flat maple fingerboard. We've made about four or five Strat and Telly necks for Frank and Dweezil; he swaps parts like crazy."
The guitar has been fitted with a Floyd Rose tremolo, a built-in parametric EQ and three Seymour Duncan humbucking bar-magnet pickups. Strings are Ernie Ball stainless-steel; picks are either stainless-steel or copper.
Do you have top five favorites?
[...] I also have Stratocaster with a Floyd Rose installed on it. It was the guitar that I used the most on the last European tour.
GW Most of the Guitar album was done on a custom Strat, according to the liner notes. What did that consist of?
ZAPPA The only thing that is "Strat" about this Strat is the shape of the body. I think that the original body was a heavy Fender Stratocaster body. And I had a neck custom made for it at [Hollywood custom shop] Performance Guitar, and it has custom electronics in it and Seymour Duncan pickups.
GW What kind of electronics are involved?
ZAPPA It was a circuit that was designed right here in the Utility Muffin Research Kitchen. It's got a gain stage and two parametric EQ circuits built into it. It's set up so that you can have either EQ or gain, or gain plus both of these concentric [EQ] pots. The pots give you variable frequency selection and variable boost and cut at the different frequencies. And then there's a screwdriver adjustment for the Q [resonance point] of the filter—how peaky it will be. This allows you to tune right into the feedback point of the room. You can find out where it's going to squeal, locate it and then that's it.
GW Hence, a lot of that really controlled feedback in your soloing.
ZAPPA Exactly.
GW Are the pickups just stock Seymour Duncan Strat pickups?
ZAPPA Seymour has wrapped some special pickups for me from time to time. I believe that what live in that Strat now are pickups that have an 8k boost.
D'Mini Guitars
Is the weight factor behind your choice of small guitars?
Yes, I have three of them, and I don't wear them; I play them. I have one Strat and two baby Les Pauls. They were made by D'Mini. [Ed. Note: These models are called the Les Paule and the Strate by their manufacturer, Phased Systems.] The D'Mini Strat that I have is unbelievable; you can't believe the noises that come out of that thing. It's ridiculous, I'm having a special one made with a little bit deeper body on it so that I can have a locking vibrato put on.
How are those guitars tuned?
The little Les Pauls are tuned up to A, and the Strat is tuned to F#. The relationship between the strings is the same as on a standard guitar.
Are special strings used on those guitars?
On the little Strat I use Gold Maxima strings. On the little Les Pauls, I use Black maximas, which are Teflon-coated. They don't make them anymore, but I had a lot of them lying around. The upper unwound strings are platinum-plated.
What modifications have you had done to your D'Mini Strate?
The neck and body are stock, and it has Seymour Duncan pickups, and a built-in parametric equalizer with variable "Q" [resonance]; that's the one with the concentric knobs. It was custom-designed here at the Utility Muffin Research Kitchen [Zappa's studio/workshop]. There's a volume control and a silver plug that takes the place of another parametric that failed when I was out on the road. It has a 3-way selector, and the toggle switch used to be for switching between the two parametrics. By having two parametrics, I was able to preset two different types of feedback boost. The circuit boards were worked on by Midget Sloatman and Eddie Clothier. David Robb, who was the guitar tech on the last tour, also did some work on it.
Tours
1974 Spring Tour
I think the [Mu-Tron] is a good box. And I just bought a
Morley rotating sound pedal. Have you seen that? It's pretty interesting. It's
like a . . . You've seen the Morley wah-wah pedal? It's not battery-operated, you
plug it into the wall. It's chrome, it's about this long, about that wide. It's
got a real big pedal on it. Well, the rotating sound box is about that long and
it's got this box sitting on top of it. It's got a motor and some other weird
stuff on it and it's got a few adjustments. It can either sound like a Leslie or
it can do a thing that's roughly equivalent to a Cooper time cube. Know what
that is? It's a device they use in a studio for making things sound like they're
doubled. You know, a real short echo. A Cooper time cube is nothing more
elaborate than sixteen feet of garden hose with a transducer on one end that
produces a sound and another on the other end which hears, and what you get is a
16 millisecond delay. Anyway, what this box does is in one position, if you pull
it back, if you hit one note on the string you'll hear the original note you hit
and then a very slight delay of it. It just thickens the tone. It's pretty
interesting.
1982 Tour
On the last tour, I took out a Fender XII 12-string, the Telecaster, the Les Paul, the Hendrixx Strat, my old mirror-pickguard SG, and the Stratocaster with the Floyd Rose on it. Plus the mini Strat and the mini Les Paul. Right now, the only thing I miss on my D'Minis is the vibrato arm.
[...] The guitar I played the most was my Strat with the Floyd Rose on it, and it was capable of such ungodly noises with that parametric EQ and the pickups that were in it. It made plenty of noises without any fuzztones or other crap.
Additional informant: Javier Marcote.
