Post by buzzyboy on Jun 16, 2018 16:44:45 GMT -5
Hey all,
As a longtime Mats fan and an amateur guitar maker/enthusiast/player I was fascinated by the guitar on the cover of the "Live at Maxwell's 1986" release. I recognized this guitar as the same guitar Paul played on their infamous SNL performances the same year and did a little sleuthing to try to find out more information about it.
What I found out is that it was (it is very different now) a 1955 Gibson Les Paul Special that was originally yellow (TV Yellow to be exact). It had replacement Grover tuners and a replacement Leo Quan Badass bridge. The rest appeared to be original. This is the guitar he used to record "Tim" and "Please to Meet Me" and I'm guessing he got it in 1985 when they signed their Sire deal and got some money for equipment. Early on it had a Bazooka gum sticker on the headstock which was gone by the time of the SNL appearance. At some point Paul painted it Navy blue. He didn't use spray paint, he brushed it on; in fact, he didn't even remove the knobs or any of the hardware he just painted around everything! I'm guessing he only painted the top and maybe the sides as the whole job seems purposely sloppy. From the photos I notice that the plastic tip on the pickup selector is missing, one of the knobs is missing and the potentiometer is broken. He also, in a most Westerbergian fashion, scratched "FOR SALE" into the front of the body. I've heard he also wrote an obsensity on the back but I've seen no evidence of that .
So what happened to this guitar and where is it now? Well I've tracked it down and it belongs to a fellow in Iowa who purchased it from a music shop in Des Moines. As the story goes, in 1989 The Replacements were playing a show in Des Moines and during the show Pauls guitar got broken, the neck got snapped. Paul told his tech (Bill Sullivan?) to take it to a music store and sell it (not fix it, but sell it...). This was done and the music shop then fixed it up to resell it. They replaced the neck with the neck from a Gibson Melody Maker guitar and painted it red/orange. They also filled in the scratches and cleaned up all the parts. Someone noticed the guitar and realized what it was, and snatched it up. I'd imagine it cost around $1200 or so dollars. Thus the guitar still exists (mostly) and the owner is a Mats fan and pulls it out to play Paul's songs. He says it sounds like the records.
As I learned this story I set a mission for myself to see if I could create a faithful copy of Paul's 1955 Les Paul Special as it existed in 1986! So I did, starting with an inexpensive Les Paul Junior kit from byoguitars.com. I converted it to a Les Paul Special layout, painted it, installed the correct hardware and voila! Done!
It was a labor of love, and my little tribute to Paul and what he has meant to me over the years.
-buz
As a longtime Mats fan and an amateur guitar maker/enthusiast/player I was fascinated by the guitar on the cover of the "Live at Maxwell's 1986" release. I recognized this guitar as the same guitar Paul played on their infamous SNL performances the same year and did a little sleuthing to try to find out more information about it.
What I found out is that it was (it is very different now) a 1955 Gibson Les Paul Special that was originally yellow (TV Yellow to be exact). It had replacement Grover tuners and a replacement Leo Quan Badass bridge. The rest appeared to be original. This is the guitar he used to record "Tim" and "Please to Meet Me" and I'm guessing he got it in 1985 when they signed their Sire deal and got some money for equipment. Early on it had a Bazooka gum sticker on the headstock which was gone by the time of the SNL appearance. At some point Paul painted it Navy blue. He didn't use spray paint, he brushed it on; in fact, he didn't even remove the knobs or any of the hardware he just painted around everything! I'm guessing he only painted the top and maybe the sides as the whole job seems purposely sloppy. From the photos I notice that the plastic tip on the pickup selector is missing, one of the knobs is missing and the potentiometer is broken. He also, in a most Westerbergian fashion, scratched "FOR SALE" into the front of the body. I've heard he also wrote an obsensity on the back but I've seen no evidence of that .
So what happened to this guitar and where is it now? Well I've tracked it down and it belongs to a fellow in Iowa who purchased it from a music shop in Des Moines. As the story goes, in 1989 The Replacements were playing a show in Des Moines and during the show Pauls guitar got broken, the neck got snapped. Paul told his tech (Bill Sullivan?) to take it to a music store and sell it (not fix it, but sell it...). This was done and the music shop then fixed it up to resell it. They replaced the neck with the neck from a Gibson Melody Maker guitar and painted it red/orange. They also filled in the scratches and cleaned up all the parts. Someone noticed the guitar and realized what it was, and snatched it up. I'd imagine it cost around $1200 or so dollars. Thus the guitar still exists (mostly) and the owner is a Mats fan and pulls it out to play Paul's songs. He says it sounds like the records.
As I learned this story I set a mission for myself to see if I could create a faithful copy of Paul's 1955 Les Paul Special as it existed in 1986! So I did, starting with an inexpensive Les Paul Junior kit from byoguitars.com. I converted it to a Les Paul Special layout, painted it, installed the correct hardware and voila! Done!
It was a labor of love, and my little tribute to Paul and what he has meant to me over the years.
-buz
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