![]() The headstock was fitted Fender Schaller Elite Gold tuner pegs. This was a consequence of countless refret jobs done by Rene Martinez, who mostly used Dunlop 6100 fretwire. ![]() The fingerboard radius was originally 7.25″ but eventually came down to 10″. Stevie’s Number One is finished in sunburst and it’s original neck has a thick, D-shaped profile with 1-5/8″ (41mm) nut width. ![]() It was not until 1980 that Rene Martinez took the whole guitar apart and saw the year 1963 stamped in the body and 1962 on the neck. It is rumoured, although not proved, that he believed it was a 1959 model because he once took the pickups off and realized that they were made in 1959, so he made a conclusion from that. The guitar was built using a 1963 Stratocaster body and a 1962 neck, even though Stevie believed it was a 1959 Stratocaster. Number One originally had a white pickguard which was replaced with a black one that now adds the “SRV” logo, and a right-handed tremolo bar – now gold-plated left-handed. He got it from the owner of Ray Henning’s Heart of Texas music shop in 1973, and it quickly became his main companion. The neck pickup is positioned an even 1/8” from the strings.This was Stevie’s main guitar. The height of the bridge pickup is kept a low 5/32” from the strings on the bass side (to clean up the low-end response) and 3/32” on the treble side. Gibbons experimented with this setup, and he found a noticeable difference in the bass response and the better feel.įinally, a pair of (you guessed it) Seymour Duncan Pearly Gates pickups run through the stock Gibson electronics. There’s a standard Gibson ABR-1 bridge and stop tailpiece-although the strings are few through the tailpiece in the reverse direction, and then wrapped back over the top towards the bridge. A bone nut was added, and the strings adjusted very low over the first fret. The neck is very straight, and the low action measures just under 4/64” at the 12th fret. It’s even more startling that Gibbons insists few adjustments to his amp rig are necessary when he changes to the hollowed out Pauls from Pearly Gates-his faithful Les Paul that sets the standard by which he judges all others. The result is a guitar so unexpectedly light and resonant that notes seem to jump right out of it. Bolin removes the top and the fingerboard, and then scoops out as much wood as possible from the body and neck before putting the Paul back together and flawlessly touching it up. ![]() ![]() Before ZZ Top maestro Billy Gibbons riffs away, the guitar is handed over to luthier and longtime friend John Bolin. Who would have guessed that one of the heaviest guitar sounds to ever thunder from a speaker would come out of as extremely light guitar? What looks to be a beautiful, vintage “burst” Les Paul is actually a newer Gibson reissue. ![]()
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