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i’m not sure i’ve ever been in the same room with one, though there must have been one at CME or True Tone in Long Beach. given that i converted my acoustic 12 because i don’t play enough 12 to justify the cost of even the Squier it wouldn’t make sense so i’ve never really tried one. if i wanted a 30-pound guitar with two necks i’d prefer the one with the bass neck because it’s more useful for my stuff. having a bass neck on a guitar would be helpful for looping. however, if i wanted an electric 12 it wouldn’t be SG-shaped or have PAFs. one of Captain Beefheart’s guys played a 6/4 when i saw him in 1972, but i don’t recall if he ever actually played the bass neck.

The weight thing depends on the build really, the sg ones are in the heavy Les Paul / Yamaha sg2000 range… i play find a carvin 6/4 that was made in the 80s once… I think it was at bananas at large…that had to have been over 30 pounds.. it was comically heavy

that reminds me of the legendary granite Telecaster Roy Buchanan had built. IIRC it was about 55 pounds and he could only play it sitting down. the sustain was apparently remarkable, though. now i'm gonna have to look for an article about it.

all i can find is anecdotes. they place the weight as 60 pounds and note that Roy never recorded with it, though one source claims he brought it along to a session just to show people.

i don't know what it is about DC that makes Telecaster players with an ocean of chops and no material go insane and kill themselves.

I blame country music.
I remember that… it was written about in guitar player? I think it’s in their service and setup book they put out in the 90s… or it was referenced in the electric guitar building book by Marvin Hiscock..

Roy mentioned it in a Guitar Player interview, saying essentially what’s recounted here.

it wasn’t just him, either…Danny Gatton also had the same career arc. be blindingly brilliant in a niche genre but incapable of writing songs/music or singing them, and unable to function as second banana with a singer or group.

Sadly that describes an ton of guys that played in cover bands in the 70s,80s&early 90s.. or.. 99% of classical soloists…

true. it's just striking to me that Buchanan and Gatton had similar trajectories in the same relative geographic area. was there a huge market there for country-flavored guitar pyrotechnics, or what?

Buchanan and Gatton knew each other and were friends. Gatton candidly admitted to lifting some things from Buchanan and lifted more than he admitted.

i think that's probably true of most people who are, erm, heavily influenced by another player. i'm occasionally startled by what will pop out of the guitar after not being thought of for 30 or 40 years.

so i’ve come upon yet another learning experience. soon after i got the Princeton Reverb RI i replaced the tubes, except for the 5AR4 rectifier tube. naturally, it now appears to be going south. at first i started getting significantly reduced output that fixed itself when i power-cycled the amp. now the signal is dirty and significantly reduced. i looked it up and this can be a indicator that the rectifier is bad. it could also explain why the amp has been so insanely loud…apparently some Fender/Groove Tubes 5AR4s were specced for amps 40 watts and above and i think that tube has been doing funky shit with the voltage.

so i start looking for 5AR4s online and holy shit but those guys are expensive. NOS tubes are pretty much beyond my means. weird that these are pricey while 5Y3s are relatively affordable. i’m not spending $100+ on one tube. after some Googling it turns out that JJ and Tung-Sol are best liked, and i don’t like JJ tubes so Tung-Sol it is. it would be nice if this made the amp act more like a normal Princeton. i’ll have to put this off a bit, though…i don’t want to leave any more packages sitting in the lobby while i’m on vacation. i’m not a fan of tube rectifiers, and put a Yellowjacket solid-state adapter in the Hammond head. it cleaned up the sound some, but i might switch back now that i have a cleaner tube amp. that’s always an option for the PRRI as well. i’m not going to play through it until i get the new tube; i’ve read that a completely blown rectifier tube can take out a power tube and/or blow the fuse. i’m using the AC15 for now.

i get stuff from Fender in my Facebook feed, and they have some silly shit nowadays. witness this peculiar item. i’m not sure what’s weirdest, that they’re selling signature cables, that one’s named after Joe Strummer, or that it’s 13 feet long. and if this isn’t dorky enough, look up the MONONEON cable.


the Joe Telecasters really pissed me off because they played wonderfully but had that horrid relic job.