License Plate Guitar Pt. 2 - Dirty Details Done at Home Depot

Here are some of those dirty details I promised in the last blog. I hope you enjoy them. Guitar/Hardware nerds rejoice!

Thanks again Jay Patton for all these specs.

The top of this guitar is my old license plate from 2004ish.

The bridge is a nut and bolt.

The volume knob is a valve stem cap (like on your car’s tire)

The body is made out of ¾” cedar plank.

We have 3 lil soundholes at the top so I can hear every damned mistake I make.

The construction is neck-through with a 24.75” (Gibson) scale. Does that qualify it as a Gibson Guitar....Sure!

The pickups are 2 piezo disks wired in parallel with a 250k volume pot.

The tail piece is a metal exhaust hanger/bracket

The back of the guitar is sheet metal.

The nut is cow bone

  The tuners are plain ol’ open gear tuners with pearloid keys

The fret dots are nail heads.

The neck is oak with a ¼” oak fretless fretboard (the wings on the headstock are maple)

For more music head over to http://www.sincerelyiris.com/

License Plate Guitar - Keep it in the Family

Today I'd like to blog about a new friend of mine. I received this little monster for Christmas two years ago and it's slowly but surely creeped its way into live shows and in the near future will be on my license plate album. This guitar was built by Mr. Jay Patton. Jay is a guitar player, slide guitarist, singer, car enthusiast, electronics whiz and....cousin. He's my go to guy for all things music, plus he has to answer my questions because we're related. For a previous blog about the pedals he built for me, go HERE

Here's a tasty little sample of his slide playing:

Learn how to make a free Electronic Press Kit

Of course I would be dead meat if I didn't mention that this gift was my mom's idea. Thanks mom! On our next episode, I'll dive into some of the dirty details about this guitar (with pics!) 

My Mistakes

My cousin Jay tells me that I need to buy a mandolin already because I'm always trying to emulate one in my songs. This song's weird stringed noises are all done by guitar. I really put this guitar deception to work in a song a few albums ago called Boy's Girls and Fools. Check it out here.

I'm sure that my overdub obsession started with The Smashing Pumpkins and Queen when I was a teenager. This Queen song Keep Yourself Alive just blew my mind. Listen to that solo at 2:35...I mean come on!! I used Open E Tuning (EBEG#BE) on this song with a capo on the 2nd fret.

This song is a laundry list of mistakes that I've made in my life. And in the end I think they all happened for a reason. All of your mistakes can eventually lead you to the thing that makes you most happy.