THE SIGNATURE SOUND
Ever since the guitar was invented, players have gone to virtually unimaginable lengths to put their own personal touches on the instrument. There’s a whole world of variables to argue when it comes down to the specifics (whether we’re talking mass-produced axes or one-offs, luthier-customer deals or big-name sponsorships, homemade works and so on), but the first real “signature model” guitar can be traced back to 1913, when the Martin company developed a boutique acoustic to the specs of Hollywood-based teacher – and historically significant virtuoso of her own accord – Vahdah Olcott-Bickford.
Gibson pioneered the trend of marketing signature guitars for big-name stage players, credibly lighting the spark in 1927 when they launched the Gibson Nick Lucas flattop. 1952 saw them make electric guitar history when they debuted the first ever Gibson Les Paul – a model type still at the tippy top of guitarists’ vocabularies today, and one that countless major label monsters and stadium-stuffing soloists have put their own spin on past Paul’s original, trapeze tailpiece-flourished flair.
Over half a century later, and the signature model guitar has evolved into somewhat of a badge of honour for most famous players – official, brand-recognised certification that you’re a goddamn freak with a fretboard in hand, worthy of shredding it up with the big dogs. But there are thousands upon thousands of them on the market, now – having a signature guitar, while an enormous career milestone and certainly something worth boasting about for the rest of your life, isn’t the show-stopping, instant induction into the hall-of-fame that it once was.
Throughout history, there have been a stack of signature models and custom builds that not only wowed crowds at gigs and made the records they were played on that extra bit memorable, but have inspired hordes of wannabe virtuosos around the globe to chase their wildest six-stringed dreams – guitars that have become as much their own pieces of art as they are instruments to create it. This piece aims to celebrate some of those – a small handful of them, admittedly, but some that we look to as the finest examples of what players can do when they combine their talents as guitarists with their creativity as artists in general.
So, sit back, relax, read on through and start thinking about what your own once-in-a-lifetime custom guitar would look like. Who knows – it might just wind up in our follow-on story ten years from now!
TOM MORELLO’S “ARM THE HOMELESS” MONGREL
THE AXE
At first a Strat knock-off with a Performance Corsair neck, two Seymour Duncan JB humbuckers and a chrome Floyd Rose, Morello has given this little-shredder-that-could its fair share of upgrades (some desperately needed, he’s stressed). Its specs have gone through more changes than we could count, however its most notable setup features (or featured – we’re unsure if Morello has made any recent changes since it returned to his main arsenal at the turn of the ‘10s) a graphite Kramer-style neck – which he scored dumpster-diving out the back of a shop called Nadine’s Music – an Ibanez Edge double-locking tremolo, and a set of EMG 85/H pickups. Adorned atop the stock baby blue finish are drawings of hippos (which Morello once joked was the only thing he knew how to draw) and its infamous titular phrase, “ARM THE HOMELESS”.
THE STORY
Morello had the first version of this unsuspecting baby blue beast custom-built at a Hollywood store dubbed Performance Guitar – which was, at its core, a deceptively lucrative-looking outlet aimed at; “It looked bad, it sounded bad, it was grotesquely overpriced, and of course over the next two years, I changed literally everything about it except for the piece of wood.” Nevertheless, the axe would become Morello’s go-to throughout the glory days of Rage Against The Machine, and despite a short stint of reprieve between ’02 and ’07, has remained a core part of his live setup.
