We head down to Wunjo Guitar on Denmark St with the UK guitarist – and walk out of there with a strange but compelling instrument…
Category
🎵
MusicTranscript
00:00 Does it have... oh shit it does.
00:03 Oh no.
00:05 How have I never seen one of these?
00:09 Hello, I'm Declan McKenna. I'm here at One Joe Guitars at Denmark Street and I'm here with Guitar.com looking at some guitars.
00:27 This is the guitar, it's not one of my first guitars but this is the guitar that my guitar teacher had.
00:32 The thing that he sort of bestowed onto me was that if you try before you buy with a kind of cheap guitar, you don't need to spend loads of money.
00:41 Because the odd one is really, really good.
00:43 And I mean my first guitar would have been like a Tanglewood or something like that.
00:47 I had a couple of installations which were kind of like Strat coffees.
00:51 But yeah, not a million miles away from this sort of thing.
00:57 I might go for the Black Falcon.
01:02 This is a Gretsch, I guess it's a Black Falcon. It's kind of similar to my one.
01:20 But it's a slightly wider hollow. I guess maybe this is a full hollow and mine is kind of more semi-hollow.
01:29 A lot of my guitars I go for the Bixby or some kind of whammy tremolo moment because it's just a big part of how I play guitar a lot of the time really.
01:43 There's just something alive about it which I really like.
01:49 I've been kind of having a lot of interesting times with feedback because I've started running my acoustic and my electric both through my pedalboard.
01:57 And I have a switcher which can do A, B or A and B which is my amp and my DI line.
02:03 So I'm playing a solo and I kick the DI line to get that really direct fuzzy DI sound as well as backing up the amp.
02:13 But then I also get my JC doing chorusy amp sound behind my acoustic.
02:20 But obviously some shows it's fine and some shows it's crazy.
02:25 You flick it on and sound check and it's just like...
02:38 I was looking at the Silvertone up here because we actually used one of these on that album.
02:45 We used the Silvertone, not exactly like this but with these sorts of pickups, working on my upcoming album.
02:59 Do you know what these pickups are?
03:02 Lipstick ones.
03:03 Lipstick pickups, there you go. Learn something new every day.
03:07 We used this on Elevator Hum which I'm pretty sure this is what we used for the guitars in the second chorus and beyond.
03:14 It's like a little part.
03:16 It's just like a cool DI'd sound straight out. No bullshit.
03:30 What is it? 60s?
03:35 I have a 60s, it could be even older, it's a catalogue guitar, it's a Holiday.
03:42 But it was fairly cheap in the grand scheme of things and it's a little less well kept I would say than this.
03:54 It has a bit more of a rough edge to it and it definitely won't sound like this will.
04:00 But it's cool for that very reason, that it's kind of a battered old catalogue guitar.
04:08 The Red Grudge. What's going on with the...
04:27 What the hell is this?
04:30 Oh shit, it does.
04:32 Oh no.
04:34 How have I never seen one of these?
04:39 I'll take it back, I'll go back to a Grudge.
04:42 I don't know what to do.
04:45 The tone's elevated, it's so odd.
04:49 This one's piqued my interest for sure.
05:06 A 62 Terry Custom, there we go. That's the one you want.
05:12 Most people if they have seen me play or seen pictures or videos of me play,
05:25 it's normally with a sort of gold sparkly guitar, a bit similar to this, same pickups.
05:32 This is actually a 62 Custom, I don't believe my guitar is anywhere near as old as that.
05:36 I've just kind of been hunting out the perfect Telly and eventually found it at Chicago Music Exchange.
05:43 And it had recently, as I was told at the time, this is like 2018, 2019 when I was on tour in America,
05:51 been exchanged for an amp or something there.
05:54 Some guy found this Dream amp and left them with my Dream guitar.
05:59 As I say, it matched the gold and black sort of colour scheme we had on tour at the time.
06:07 It just sounds good with everything, I'll just plug it in and it just sounds crazy.
06:11 With any amp setup, I've gone for a few different ones over the years.
06:16 I've recently started using a Jazz Chorus amp in my live setup and plugging it into that,
06:21 whether you're using the distortion, the chorus, just a straight clean.
06:26 I'm just like, wow, that's what this guitar sounds like.
06:30 I think the Telly is not just a functional guitar, because to me it sounds really emotional,
06:38 if you play it with a soft touch, you know.
06:43 [Music]
06:56 Thanks for joining me and Guitar.com for a bit of guitar shopping.
07:01 I am actually getting this one.
07:03 I said it was a problem and it is, but this is going to come in handy, I think.
07:09 [Music]
07:15 [BLANK_AUDIO]