Finding the Perfect Electric Guitar: Have You Played “The One?”

My wife and I really enjoy living in the Northeast. Rolling hills, all four seasons, close to the coast, and plenty of day trip getaways to keep our summers busy and our vacations peaceful. One of our favorite haunts is Vermont and the town of Bennington. There are historical features there, such as the Bennington Battle Monument and the grave of the poet Robert Frost. Chiseled onto the face of his stone is the inscription, “I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.” This lovely, simple quote perfectly summarizes my relationships with guitars. When I was young, I started taking lessons in Nazareth, Pennsylvania—right under the shadow of the Martin Guitar factory! I had all the inspiration in the world, and yet I would choose laziness and not practice. My mom would cancel my sessions, and then the itch to play would bubble up, and I’d be on a huge creative bender. This is how it went for most of my life. Fire and ice, playing and not playing. I probably should be an amazing player, but, alas, I remain a caveman. Part of the reason for that is I just don’t have a good ear and can’t carry a tune. My wife, on the other hand, is a music teacher and has incredible musical ability. She can play just about every instrument, even the wooden fifes sold at the Bennington Battle Monument! Seriously, she plays historical music on these primitive instruments while I’m messing around with the pop guns.In my late teens and 20s, I really went on a creative spell and there was no stopping my insanity for guitar. This was also when I was buying old guitars and piecing them back together. I met Mike Dugan (the guy who plays guitar in all my videos) and started to join bands and go to open jams. Soon I found myself buying and selling guitars and looking for my “tone.” I guess we all go through this search at one time or another, but I just couldn’t be satisfied. For a while, I played a Univox Hi-Flier and then a nice Yamaha SG-1000. Eventually, I was running through guitars like water in a stream. Never ending.Mike Dugan would always tell me, “When you know, you know,” but I just couldn’t figure it out. It wasn’t until I started hearing him play in my studio every week that I developed an ear for guitars. I mean, I still struggled tuning a guitar, but I could sense when a guitar had “it”—that zing, that bite, that crystalline quality that you could hear. Wood didn’t matter. Pickups didn’t matter. It just worked or it didn’t, and I wouldn’t be swayed. And the first guitar where I “knew” was this Kawai S160 dating to the early ’60s. The necks on these are huge, and the pickups have low output, but they all sound great. Really, I like all the Kawai electrics from the early days, but this one is my “one.”“Have you found your guitar? Your tone? It’s out there somewhere for you.”Located in Hamamatsu, Japan, Kawai was making pianos before their foray into electric guitars. A lot of the early Japanese guitar makers lacked understanding of the guitar, but what they did have was lovely wood and experienced wood craftsmen. These guitars are robust and solid; they could hammer in fence posts! The truss rods don’t work at all, but the necks are so chunky that it doesn’t matter! And these early S-series Kawai guitars have some of the most beautifully figured rosewood that I’ve ever seen. Simply gorgeous.The electronics are simple and easy to navigate with just one tone and volume pot, and one on/off switch for each pickup. The pickups handle overdrive or fuzz so well. These guitars also came in three- and four- pickup versions, and all sound fine. The tremolo pictured on mine is really the one to get, because it actually works well! Since most of the Kawai guitars were imported to Chicago, they were found in the hands of many bluesmen, including Hound Dog Taylor. So my lover’s quarrel with guitars is a real thing. But some guitars just inspire you to play, or in my case, just make some noise. So how about you? Have you found your guitar? Your tone? It’s out there somewhere for you, and here’s hoping you find “the one” … or two!