n’t the case. So eventually, in Nashville, I
got a gentleman to fly up with the guitar.
And this wasn’t someone who stole the
guitar – it was just someone who ended
up with it. And I paid a reward for it – a
small reward. But he was very happy, and
Gibson gave him another one of my signature guitars, a newer one. So that was it.
So we took the guitar from the hotel room
back to Gibson, and got it verified as 1954
Black Beauty original, and it had been
routed for three humbuckers instead of
the ones that were in there originally. I
mahogany, and Gibson and (vintage guitar expert) Tom Murphy did all of the
work.
IE: And the 35 guitars were all signed and
played by you, personally? How did that
work?
PF: Well, I went down to Gibson many
times to the custom shop, as it was coming
along. And I’d take it home and try the
prototype. But this was the day that they
were all going to be ready, with three prototypes up front and then the 35 guitars.
So I went down there and played every
March 4
Big Ups – Before A Million Universes
Black Peaches – Get Down You Dirty Rascals
The Coral – Distance Inbetween
The Feeling – The Feeling
The Knocks – 55
Ray LaMontagne – Ouroboros
Esperanza Spaulding – Emily’s D+Evolution
Nada Surf – You Know Who You Are
The Struts – Everybody Wants
Violent Femmes – We Can Do Anything
Wussy – Forever Sounds
March 11
03•2016
didn’t want to clean it up too much – I
wanted the scars. But Gibson made it
playable again, and the parts that weren’t
working anymore, we replaced. So it
probably sounds better now than it did
then.
IE: But the story doesn’t end there. Gibson
actually made 35 limited-edition replicas
of that axe, which now sell for $20,000 on
eBay?
PF: There was already my PF custom,
which was what Gibson and I came up
with from memory of the original one.
And you can order those still. But they
came to me and said, “Would you want to
do a clone of this? We’ll do a small-number thing, as we’ve sold over 1,000 of the
PF customs.” So I was like, “Yeah! That
would be fantastic!” So we worked
together for a good year on it. It’s all
one. And they only vary in weight a small
amount, because no guitar weighs the
same as the next one. But they saved all
the light mahogany for this run for me,
because my original – even though it’s
solid mahogany – is not a heavy guitar at
all. So I was very lucky – it was Honduras
mahogany early on, and Gibson did an
incredible job in selecting the wood. They
took such great care that they could have
probably made 1,000 other guitars in the
time that it took them to make the 35.
IE: Do you play the original in concert