BIG Media boss Rob Driscoll asked me why I had not given him any articles lately, and I said I was out of ideas! Knowing that I am an avid guitar player, he suggested an article on musical instruments. That was a bit too general a topic to tackle, but it did motivate me to produce an article on my favourite instrument, the guitar.
Like most guitar players I know, I have a large collection of guitars. I play for pleasure and in an amateur big jazz band. Since at any given practice I will show up with a variety of guitars, one of our saxophone players asked me a question: why do you have so many guitars while I only have one saxophone? It was a very good question, and one that has multiple answers.
The first answer is found in the history of the guitar. The first guitar-like instrument was probably a single taut string plucked over some type of resonant cavity, developed somewhere in West Africa. From there, it evolved to the beautifully crafted oud in North Africa and the Middle East. The oud then migrated to Europe as the lute (originally l’oud in French). The lute gradually transformed into the guitar through Italian masters such as Stradivarius (more famous for his violins) and Spanish makers of the guitar-like vihuela. But it is generally agreed that the modern guitar got its start in 19th-century Spain, when Antonio de Torres Jurado created its familiar shape and tuning.
Initially, the guitar needed gut or nylon strings and was a quiet parlour instrument, but CF Martin (an apprentice guitar maker in Vienna who moved to Nazareth, Pennsylvania, to set up his own shop) introduced X-bracing into the body of the guitar, which allowed steel strings to be used, with their brighter and louder sound.
This still was not loud enough, and in the 1930s the creation of the electromagnetic pickup allowed guitars to be played through amplifiers. Initially, the pickups – which converts the physical vibration of guitar strings into an electric signal – were fitted on large acoustic guitars made by Gibson (named after Orville Gibson, another brilliant innovator), but individuals including Les Paul and Leo Fender recognized that all you really needed was a slab of wood and a pickup, which led to the solid-body guitar beloved by rockers.
This innovation reduced the feedback that was coming from electrified acoustic guitars. Although this is great for rock and roll, guitarists who play jazz often prefer the softer sound of electrified acoustic guitars called archtops. More than anything, the electrification of guitars took them out of the drawing room and onto the stage, from small jazz bars in New York to stadium rock and roll.
Another fascinating thing about guitars is the pickups themselves. The “thin” sound preferred by musicians like Eric Clapton and found on the Stratocaster and Telecaster is produced by single-coil pickups. The “thicker”, and warmer sound found on Gibson guitars comes from double-coil pickups called humbuckers because, well, they reduce the hum. Most jazz guitars have humbucker pickups. But Paul Reed Smith (PRS) introduced an interesting innovation in which their pickups are humbuckers but can be “split” in single-coil pickups, giving you both sounds.
The second reason that we guitar players have more than one guitar is found in the many styles of playing. To go with the many types of guitars – classical, flamenco, steel-string acoustic, solid body, and archtop electric guitars – are the many styles of guitar playing, where each style is suited to a particular guitar.
Some types of guitars, such as classical and flamenco, are named after the style of music played on them. Other styles, including folk and country music, are well suited to steel-string acoustics. CF Martin’s guitars are still the preferred models, although Gibson and Taylor also make fine acoustic guitars. Finally, any guitarist with a penchant for blues, rock and roll, or jazz will end up with some version of the electric guitar such as Gibson’s ES-175, ES-335, and Les Paul, or Fender’s Telecaster and Stratocaster, or PRS guitars, made famous by Carlos Santana.
The third answer is personal. I have been playing guitar for over 60 years. I started when I was 10 years old, playing an acoustic steel-string guitar and learning the Mel Bay approach, largely based on country music.
But that all changed when some friends in Grade 8 (1965 at Balmoral Junior High School in North Vancouver, Canada) asked me to join their rock band as their rhythm guitarist. My parents, who were not exactly rich, bought me a Beltone guitar and Silvertone amplifier from Sears, for which I will be forever grateful. However, our lead guitarist, whose parents were less constrained by price, had a Fender Stratocaster guitar with a Fender Deluxe Reverb amplifier, which I could only dream about owning.
Our band never made it to the airwaves, but my interest in playing continued when my guitar teacher, a jazz guitarist, inspired in me a lifelong love of playing jazz. This led to playing in the Walter Murray Jazz Band in Grade 12, after my family moved to Saskatoon in the province of Saskatchewan. But at a friend’s house during my first year of university, I was blown away by someone playing the classical guitar, which led me on a 20-year quest to master that style, although my playing time took a hit when I started raising a young family.
It culminated with getting my Grade 8 diploma through the Royal Toronto Conservatory, but by that time I was tired of just sitting in my basement playing classical pieces, so I went back to my earlier loves: rock and roll and jazz. In doing so, I have regularly played in pickup jazz and rock bands at international geophysical meetings (playing in the Natural History Museum in London and in a Left Bank jazz club in Paris were two of the highlights), and this eventually led me to join an amateur jazz band in Calgary about two years ago.
So let me officially answer my saxophone-playing friend’s question. My answer is that I have a large collection of guitars because of all the different styles of music I like to play. I have a Ramirez classical guitar, and an Alhambra electric classical, both from Spain, as well as a Taylor acoustic guitar from California that can also be played through an acoustic amplifier, which in my case is a Fishman Artist.
Then there are my rock-and-roll guitars, and I have Les Paul, Stratocaster, Telecaster and PRS guitars, which I play through a Fender Deluxe Reverb amp (am I finally making up for what I lacked in Grade 8?).
My two PRS guitars, semi-hollow on the left and Santana-style on the right, with my Deluxe Reverb amplifier behind them, and Carlos looking down on it all.
And now we get to jazz guitars. I have an archtop guitar made by Godin guitars in Quebec, as well as a thin-body, or semi-hollow, Gibson ES-335, similar in design to BB King’s beloved Lucille. My most recent guitar, which I bought because it allows me to perform all types of music, from rock and roll to mellow jazz and bossa nova, is yet another PRS guitar, shown in the adjacent photo with my Santana-style PRS. This guitar is a limited-edition, semi-hollow guitar made from reclaimed and salvaged woods from the Caribbean and Brazil. The wood still has original markings like nail holes and is finished in a simple satin-nitro finish. Its three pickups can be combined into 12 different sound combinations, although I generally stick to two or three.
Every one of my guitars has its own story and its own feel and sound. They are like a second family to me. In this, I am no different than any of the thousands of guitar geeks out there. We all have our preferred guitars, and preferred playing styles.
In fact, I pale in comparison to other guitarists and collectors. Randy Bachman owns about 450 guitars, which include 350 vintage Gretsch guitars. His obsession with collecting Gretsch instruments started when his favourite Gretsch guitar was stolen, which led to a 45-year search for it. The guitar was finally located in Japan, owned by a Japanese guitarist. That musician was happy to return the guitar to Randy in exchange for one of Randy’s many similar models.
I have seen other collectors on Facebook who only collect one type of guitar, such as Gibson Les Paul or ES-175 archtop guitars made in different years. One collector proudly displayed his 50 Gibson Flying V guitars (named because of their distinctive shape), where the only difference I could discern was their colour.
So, the next time you meet a guitarist, have pity for the passionate pursuit of purchasing as many guitars as he or she can afford. It is an obsession that lasts a lifetime!
(Brian Russell – BIG Media Ltd., 2026)
