Ward Meeker
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Articles by Ward Meeker
Steve Cropper
Steve Cropper: Stacie Huckeba. As a member of Booker T. & the MG’s, Cropper used an early-’50s Fender Esquire (plugged into a Harvard amp) to record the renowned instrumental “Green Onions,” which became a hit in 1962. He also composed and played the repeating lick to Sam & Dave’s 1967 hit “Soul Man,” on which singer Sam Moore famously shouts, “Play it, Steve!” in the second chorus. Cropper’s life was shaped by a Silvertone guitar when he was 14.
Ace Frehley - Vintage Guitar® magazine
Frehley onstage during Kiss’ 1996 reunion tour. Ace Frehley 1996: Fabio Diena/Alamy. Frehley spent the early ’70s in small-time New York City bands before a friend spotted an ad for a lead guitarist in The Village Voice, which in late 1972 led to auditioning for what would become Kiss.
Classics: Ben Mitchell’s Pair of Paul Reed Smiths
Ben Mitchell’s 1992 PRS Custom 24 Walnut and Custom 24 Zebrawood. When he stepped into Nalli Music Annex in Ann Arbor, Michigan, one November day in 1992, he was just window shopping. Being a Fender and Gibson guy, he gazed at instruments until the salesman spotted him. “He walked up and said I should take a look at something awesome that had just come in, then he led me to the back and grabbed a guitar I didn’t recognize. He had to explain it was a PRS Custom 24 with a Zebrawood top.
Fender American Professional Classic Mustang Bass
Price: $1,599.99 www.fender.com The Mustang’s identity is rooted in ergonomics, and the American Pro Classic doesn’t stray. Its weight (eight pounds), 12″ body, and shallow cutaways are prime factors in its ease of play. The maple neck is more Precision than Jazz in dimension – 1.625″ wide at the nut with Fender’s Modern C shape – but its 30″ scale makes it a different animal for note roving, an experience made especially pleasant thanks to a satin urethane finish that is indeed silky smooth.
Ace Frehley
Born Paul Daniel Frehley on April 27, 1951, he was the youngest of three children to parents who played piano and encouraged the kids to also play instruments. He received an electric guitar as a Christmas present in 1964. Self-taught, his formative years were spent listening to Jimi Hendrix, Albert Lee, Buddy Guy, Jeff Beck, B.B. King, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, and The Who.
Spector Doug Wimbish Euro 4
Price: $3,499.99 www.spectorbass.com Today, Spector is part of the Korg empire and one of its newest offerings is the Doug Wimbish Euro 4, based on the Living Colour bassist’s ’87 NS-2. Using the radical body shape and size that made Spector famous, the Wimbish Euro 4 has maple body wings with a figured-maple top offered in Amber Stain or Black Stain.
Mick Ralphs
Ralphs and his ’58 Les Paul Standard onstage with Bad Company in 1975. Between 1969 and ’71, the band (fronted by vocalist Ian Hunter) released four increasingly unsuccessful albums – Mott the Hoople, Mad Shadows, Wildlife, and Brain Capers. On the verge of breaking up, David Bowie stepped in and gave them “All the Young Dudes,” which became the title track of the Bowie-produced 1972 album, and their first hit single.
Charlie Apicella
Charlie Apicella: Christopher Drukker. The two met in December of 1999. “He signed the pickguard of my ’77 Guild Starfire IV,” Apicella recalls. “More importantly, he gave me advice. He said, ‘Listen to Wes Montgomery and Charlie Christian. That’s a great way to learn the blues on guitar. Keep studying music and know the history of all different genres of blues.’ “Obviously, it changed the course of my life.” Truly. Beyond the advice, what did you learn from watching B.B. both onstage and off?
Eastwood Hooky VK Pro
Price: $1,499 www.eastwoodguitars.com In 2022, Hook decided to revisit the form, and approached Eastwood (which had previously built a clone of his Shergold Marathon 6) to carry the torch in place of Eccleshall, who died in 2020. Their latest collab is the Hooky VK Pro.
Player-POV Periodical
What inspired the magazine’s name? At first, I suggested Guitar Gear or Guitar Shop. I settled on the latter, as it alluded both to any funky local guitar store, and to Jeff Beck’s wicked 1989 album. Obviously, you needed help developing content. How did you corral a writing staff? Somehow, I got on the phone with my guitar-journo inspirations – guys from the heyday of Guitar Player – and secured top-shelf talent like Tom Mulhern and Dan Forte.
VG Q&A: Hag, Or Not?
Brian Gardner’s mystery git. It’s difficult to say with certainty what the guitar is, but I can tell you it definitely is not a Hagstrom because their guitars were well-branded. Hagstrom introduced the Viking circa 1978 as a double-cut thinline with two humbuckers and a six-in-line or proprietary headstock shape. No single-cut Vikings were produced. It’s also definitely not an Eko, and Klira thinlines were double-cuts that never used the Viking name.
Bruce Forman
Bruce Forman in Italy with Ricardo “Stuly” Manzoli and his Adamo L-5 copy made to smaller dimensions. Forman lives a musician’s life of near-constant travel. After years of tending to the needs of a guitar whilst flying, during a 12-stop jaunt through Europe in February and March, he decided to forgo the hassle and used social media to ask fans in each city to bring one he could borrow for the evening. It worked swimmingly.
Tobias Killer B and Classic IV
Price: $1,499 (Killer B IV) www.gibson.com The mid-priced Killer B IV has a two-piece sapele body and five-piece maple/purpleheart neck with the Tobias Asym (subtly thicker on top, narrower on bottom) profile and topped with 24 frets on a wenge board that measures 1.61″ at the nut, 23/8″ where it joins the upper bass bout at the 20th fret. Weighing 8.9 pounds, the bass hangs on the body with perfect balance.
Classics: Binky Philips and Rick Derringer’s ’59 Les Paul
“Instead of a bright or fading red, it has a compelling dark-brown jazz-box-type sunburst,” Binky Philips says of the ’59. “Rick told me, ‘I beat the s**t out of that guitar and it took it.’” says Binky Philips.
Mark Sampson
Mark Sampson photo courtesy of Bad Cat. Sampson was born in Mason City, Iowa, and started playing guitar as a kid then spent his teens playing in bands. Like many his age, he was obsessed with the Beatles – and especially their gear. “I remember a very detailed plywood collage I made when I was 12,” he told VG in 1998.
Classics: Harry Branton’s ’46 SJ
Harry Branton’s salvaged ’46 Southern Jumbo has a spruce top. For the next decade, young Harry was “a sponge” soaking up music on the radio – pop, folk, rock and roll, rockabilly, surf instrumentals, and do-wop. Living on his family’s cotton farm in Leland, Mississippi, he also heard real-deal Delta blues and country played by a farmhand and a family friend. But when his older brother brought home a Rolling Stones album, it hit different.
Marc Schoenberger
Born in 1956, Schoenberger was introduced to guitar repair at age 11, when the bridge fell off of his sister’s acoustic while he was playing it without her permission. Through his teens, he fixed guitars for friends before word of mouth led to an expanding customer base and repairs for local shops. In 1990, National Reso-Phonic Guitars opened a factory in San Luis Obispo, and Schoenberger was hired to work on the production line, eventually becoming the head of assembly.
George Freeman
Born April 10, 1927, Freeman grew up listening to big-band music and horn players thanks to musician parents. His father was a police officer whose beat included the city’s clubs, which put him in contact with many of its performers. For George, Charlie Parker became a guiding influence, as did band leaders Count Basie and Tommy Dorsey as well as guitarists Charlie Christian and T-Bone Walker.
Dean DeLeo
Dean DeLeo: Dyan Gianella. DeLeo’s new solo album, One More Satellite (set for release July 18) started as 10 guitar-driven instrumentals before he decided that a couple would live better with lyrics. He sent phone recordings of them to Pete Shoulder, a singer/lyricist friend in the U.K. It didn’t take long for Shoulder to bounce them back with vocals added, and the results made DeLeo re-think the entire project. We spoke to him on the cusp of an STP tour of 5,000-seat halls in South America.
Dudley Taft
Robert Wilk. “I’m very comfortable expanding songwriting in this weird little zone that is blues rock,” he said with a chuckle. “I would say I’m 80 percent rock, 20 percent blues. And that should be enough for anyone.” Given your time on the job and your heavy touring schedule, does creating new music present any specific challenges? Well, it’s my job and I’m always working on my craft, always looking forward to the next album, trying to make it good.
Jedd Hughes
Jedd Hughes: Libby Danforth. While being busy tempered his flow of original music, in 2014, he returned to songwriting. His new solo album, Night Shades, is just his third, and was created with help from songwriter/performer/producer Rodney Crowell. More collaborative than 2019’s West, it’s also more personal. We chatted with Hughes as he prepped for a session with country star Eric Church. How did the songs on Night Shades come together?
Classics: Norman Harris
Norm Harris with a single-cut ’59 White Falcon with Filter’Tron pickups, one of perhaps a dozen that have come through his shop in 50 years. He and other pioneers in the business of buying and selling old guitars had the wind at their backs in the late ’60s. As musicians discovered that new Fenders, Martins, and Gibsons didn’t sound, feel, or play like old ones, they started buying any and every ’50s and ’60s guitar and bass they could find. Their foresight and hustle have been handsomely rewarded.
Classics: Jeremy Graf’s 1961 Fender Stratocaster
“That was my introduction to the world of rock, rhythm and blues, blues, and rockabilly,” he laughed. “From that point, I was a so into Elvis that my grandmother suggested to my parents that I should see a doctor.” (laughs) Opposite of nearly every other Babyboomer, when the Beatles landed in ’64, young Jeremy was disinterested, still wrapped in his Elvis fixation.
Classics: Marc Schoenberger’s Rickenbacker Combo 600
The Combo 600’s back reveals extensive routing and basic wiring for the horseshoe pickup. One of his repair clients was Eddie Frawley’s store, Central Coast Music, in Morro Bay, where a stop one day in 1984 became memorable. He had a repair to deliver, but was also picking up $1,300 for a ’36 Martin R-18 that he’d consigned. But, just minutes before he arrived, Frawley had hung an old Rickenbacker Spanish-style guitar on his wall.
Tommy Castro
Tommy Castro: Laura Carbone. Born and raised in San Jose, California, Castro was drawn to music as a child, chaperoned by his like-minded brother, Ray. “He’s six years older than me, and had a bunch of rock-and-roll 45s,” Castro said. “We shared a bedroom, so I heard them a lot. When I was 10, he got a guitar, and I thought it was the coolest thing in the world.
Classics: Tommy Castro’s ’66 Fender Stratocaster
Tommy Castro by Demarcus O’Dell. “It felt great in my hands, and had the tone I was trying to get out of mine,” said Castro (see interview on page 56). Having all the discretionary cash of a local blues guitarist, he had to work a deal with Nitro; they swapped Strats and Castro paid the $600 difference in installments, and for the next 20 years, the guitar was his #1, heard on his first 10 albums and seen on countless stages the world over.
Star Board: Tom Guerra
Guitarist/singer/songwriter (and VG contributor) Tom Guerra recently released his first solo album, All of the Above, which reviewer Pete Prown says is “hook-laden rock and roll originals that pay homage to everyone from the Beatles to the Byrds, and from Led Zeppelin to Mott the Hoople.” Tom is a fan of vintage gear, too, and has an impressive handful of guitars (watch for an upcoming feature on one of his Strats).
Dudley Taft - Vintage Guitar® magazine
Speaking from his home during a power outage caused by a storm the night before, Taft rolled with the punches. “I’m very comfortable expanding songwriting in this weird little zone that is blues rock,” he said with a chuckle. “I would say I’m 80 percent rock, 20 percent blues. And that should be enough for anyone.” Given your time on the job and your heavy touring schedule, does creating new music present any specific challenges?
In Detail: Gibson’s 1954-’58 Les Paul Junior
One thing it did exude that Leo’s guitar didn’t was an upscale sensibility, with its set neck, subtle top contour (implying “violin”), and dressed-to-the-nines gold finish with white trim. And it was priced accordingly. At $210, it set you back 10 percent more than did the Telecaster, despite having what some would argue was an inferior tailpiece. It didn’t take Gibson long to figure out that a cheaper alternative would be a good thing. So in 1954, it introduced the Les Paul Junior.
Summitt Guitar Pack
The Summit Guitar Pack EG201 soft case could be considered the Swiss Army knife of guitar cases. To call this just another gig bag would be a downright lie. The EG201 is made of Denier nylon, and has a metal spine that keeps the case rigid well past the headstock of a standard-scale instrument. For protection there’s an inch of foam padding all the way around, and for convenience, there’s a handy detachable satchel.
Seymour Duncan Sails Into VG Hall of Fame
Vintage Guitar today announced that Seymour Duncan has been inducted to its Hall of Fame. Each year, the magazine’s staff and readers select inductees in three categories – Player, Innovator, and Instrument. Duncan, who enters as an Innovator, shares recognition this year with Keith Richards and the Fender Deluxe Reverb. “Though he didn’t invent the electromagnetic guitar pickup, Seymour W.
Jedd Hughes - Vintage Guitar® magazine
While being busy tempered his flow of original music, in 2014 he returned to songwriting, so his latest solo album, Nightshades, is just his third. Created with help from songwriter/performer/producer Rodney Crowell, it’s more collaborative than 2019’s West, yet also more personal. We chatted with Hughes as he prepped for a session with country star Eric Church. How did the songs on Nightshades come together? The same way I started West – at home, recording and building songs while writing.
Gibson’s First Cherry Red 335
Gibson introduced the ES-335T in the spring of 1958 as the progenitor to its double-cutaway,semi-hollow body “thinline” series of guitars. Characterized by the maple block running down their centers, most of the guitars in the series – the ES-335 (and its many variations), the 340, 345, 347, 355, 320, 325, and later Artist, B.B. King, and ES-369 models – are today considered classics in the Gibson line.
Gibson’s 1966-’70 Flying V
Body is two-piece mahogany. Pickguard mounts to body with 13 screws. Pickups are patent-number humbuckers with chrome-plated covers. Tune-O-Matic bridge with Gibson’s basic spring vibrato (a.k.a. Vibrola) tailpiece. Control pots used mostly “bell knobs” with chrome inserts, though a few guitars were shipped with “witch hat” knobs. Controls – one Volume per pickup and a master Tone – are arranged in triangular fashion, with input jack below them.
John Brinkmann, 1937-2013
John Brinkmann, an innovator of the guitar-show concept and pioneer in the vintage-guitar market, passed away October 8. He had been battling diabetes and a heart condition. Brinkmann was one of the first people to advance vintage-guitar sales from early “car trunking” at flea markets to organized, promoted events where instruments were displayed on tables and the public was invited to shop.
Tuki Amp Covers - Vintage Guitar® magazine
Tuki Covers has been around since 1986, developing ever-better ways to protect various musical equipment from the many hazards that accompany real-word, professional use. The company started with – and is still best-known for – its amplifier covers. The current line features custom-made covers with two choices of materials – a heavy vinyl that simulates leather, or the more durable DuPont Cordura.
Fender ’57 Amp - Vintage Guitar® magazine
History tells us that Leo Fender wasn’t much for “fancifying” things. More meat-and-potatoes than Chicken in Walnut Curry, Leo was a simple guy, and that ethos carried over to the goods produced by his company, whose early amps were covered in tweed or plain black tolex (for flavor, sometimes brown) and guitars were mostly slabs of wood cut with no fancy arches, curves, routes, or headstock angles.
The Fender Telecaster
Simplicity. You can sum up the success of Fender’s venerable Telecaster model with one word. A cross-cultural phenomenon right down to its name – in a bind, the company essentially named it after the television – its many intuitive features revert to that one word, and players in every genre have used it to create some of history’s most recognized pop music.
Phil Kubicki 1948-2013
Philip Kubicki, a renowned guitar designer and builder who was active in the musical-instrument industry for more than 50 years, died March 18, 2013, at his home in Laconia, New Hampshire. He was 69 years old and had been diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer that January. Kubicki began building acoustic guitars at age 15 after discovering the music of Andres Segovia.
Mark Sampson - Vintage Guitar® magazine
Sampson started Bad Cat in 2000 with Rick Perrotta, James Heidrich, and Joe Allrich. His departure five years later was less than amicable, but the decades that followed saw both parties flourish. In the run-up to this year’s winter NAMM show, Bad Cat announced it was reuniting with Sampson on a new design called the Era 30.
Classics: February 2022
“I was nine or 10 years old when we went to Bartoli Music School, in Roseland,” he said. “I was handed an ES-125TC and played one song. I was sold!” In 1961, the 12-year-olds began jamming with their 14-year-old neighbor, Dennis DeYoung (on accordion), then soon formed a band – The Tradewinds. After high school, Panozzo went to seminary in ’63, but realized it wasn’t his calling and returned home the following year. While he’d been away, The Tradewinds carried on with another guitarist.
Jim Weider - Vintage Guitar® magazine
Dubbed Masters of the Telecaster Guitar Camp and set for September 30 through October 4 at Full Moon Resort in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York, it’s an educational seminar dressed in vacation clothes. The idea came to Weider as he watched his two related events grow in popularity – the Masters of the Telecaster concerts he and G.E. Smith have been hosting for a decade, and his Camp Cripple Creek, featuring players in The Band’s orbit and attended by fans of roots rock.
The Guitars of Gary Rossington
“We were at a loss with what we were suddenly in charge of,” said Mary. “Ricky suggested we call Andrew Yonke at Chicago Music Exchange, saying he could answer all of our questions.” The common fate for high-profile guitar collections these days is sale via auction house. But the Rossingtons, being uninterested in the commerce the guitars would certainly generate, were focused instead on furthering Gary’s legacy.
Wes Beech
The product of Swenson’s high-functioning mind (if you’re into evolutionary theory, do a search), the group “formed” when he met Williams in 1977; his Master of Fine Arts degree from Yale was by then nearly a decade old and he was running a repertory company called Captain Kink’s Sex Fantasy Theater, producing counterculture plays at a burlesque joint buried in the grit of Times Square.
Classics: Mike Semrad’s ’57 Gibson Les Paul Custom
The packed gym was set abuzz, and the mood carried over to school the following day. Realizing there was potential, Semrad and four buddies – Quinn Kulhanek, Ed Heine, Jay Davis, and Larry Fiehn, all first-chair players in the band – decided they should grab electric guitars, amps, and drums, and start rehearsing “modern” instrumental tunes. After all, there was no “rock and roll” band in their 15,000-person town.
Fender Blu DeTiger x Player Plus Jazz Bass
Yup, the unique Sky Burst Sparkle finish is flashy (esoteric?) and confident given the matching headstock, and the mirrored pickguard and chrome hardware speak to DeTiger’s status as a stage-obsessed rising pop-funk star (and EDM DJ). This bass, though, has go to match the show. After donning sunglasses and grabbing hold, the DeTiger’s next twist becomes apparent in how it doesn’t feel so drawn to planet Earth.
Don Culig | Vintage Guitar® magazine
Laid off in the summer of 2020, Culig pondered his options and decided to focus his energy on some element of the guitar-making process. But what, exactly? “Finish work has always been my favorite part of the craft,” he said. “And in Canada, we didn’t have many options for good old-fashioned nitrocellulose lacquer.” To fill that gap, he started Oxford Guitar Supply in Windsor, Ontario. We asked him about the details. Safe to say that from day one, you were giving your new company full-time effort?
Blu DeTiger | Vintage Guitar® magazine
In 2017, DeTiger began releasing original music, using social media to spread the word about her funky, bass-driven songs that fit a wave of disco-influenced pop. Emblematic of how the business works in the 21st century, her following (including 1.4 million on TikTok) garnered attention from Fender, which recently launched a signature Jazz Bass that sets a precedent while bringing an array of cool elements (see this month’s “Approved Gear”).
Steve Cropper | Vintage Guitar® magazine
Cropper’s fate was steered by a Silvertone when he was 14. By then, his family had moved from rural Missouri to Memphis, where local radio filled his head with gospel, R&B, and early rock and roll. After an uncle let him hold an old Gibson, the bug bit and he asked for a six-string of his own. “I remember my mother setting aside $17 and change, and when we ordered that Silvertone, they said they could deliver it for 25 cents. We told them, ‘Forget that!’ and I went to pick it up myself,” he laughs.
Classics: Harold “Sonny” Wright’s 1965 Gibson J-45
In 1962, “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” was still popular on TV, and young Harold (who family and friends called “Sonny”) was fully tuned into Ricky Nelson singing while James Burton picked behind him. Toss in Duane Eddy’s “Rebel Rouser” on the radio, along with Scotty Moore backing Elvis and tunes by the Ventures, et al. The guitar was starting to boom. Having sandbagged his way out of piano lessons, “I knew what I wanted to play,” Wright recalls.
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