JOE SATRIANI

What was the first serious guitar you bought with your own money?

“It was a ’68 Fender Telecaster, maple neck. It was probably blonde, but the previous owner had painted it black and put on a Bigsby. It still had the traditional Telecaster tray for the bridge pickup, but he figured out a way, drilling holes in the back of the tray, to get the Bigsby to work and thread the strings properly. Then he put some kind of a switch into the pickguard to do something, but it was inactive when I bought it. I played that thing for a really long time and before I traded it for, coincidently, another ’68 guitar, a Gibson Les Paul Deluxe, which I believe was also a Gold Top that