faster , but if you pick up one of those guitars that ’ s a big , chunky neck . And the back feel of the neck kind of tapers toward the headstock , like on my ’ 61 and on this new one . But that neck was much thicker and much flatter . So we were bouncing around specs on this guitar and we tried 12 ” and we tried 9½ ”. I started thinking , my ’ 61 is 7¼ ”, and all of the Custom Shop Strats that have been built for me over the years have tried to mimic the feel of that guitar are all 7¼ ”. So I felt like we needed to do a true vintage spec neck on this guitar , get the shape and the profile right with the big frets on it and go 7¼ .
[ WM ] Per the ‘ Eric Johnson tone 2 bridge pickup mod ’, how much do you use it and how do you use it ?
[ Kenny ] I roll it off just a little bit , I did that on my last signature guitar , I ’ ve done that on all my Strats , I even did that to my ’ 61 when I got it . It ’ s just one of those things that a lot of the bridge pickups are so bright and you just want to have that ability to dial it back a little bit . That ’ s what I use it for , so it ’ s not really an effect , its to tame the brightness of the pickup . When we revisited the sound of the signature pickups for this guitar , we used the pickups from my last guitar , the sound of them , as kind of a starting point , but we wanted to make improvements . One of those things was to dial back the top end of the bridge pickup from the get go so that maybe you don ’ t even have to dial it back on the tone knob , but you have the option to . I don ’ t even know how one ’ s hands are big enough to be manipulating this and playing at the same time , I ’ ve got to set it and forget it .
[ WM ] You ’ ve got one of Keith Richards ’ s guitars . How did that happen ?
[ Kenny ] I got that guitar before I had toured with The Stones , and so it was actually pretty funny . This was when Fender was doing their relic guitars for the first time , this was very early on in the Relic Series . Everything was still experimental , they were learning different techniques and trying different finishes , so this was the very first ‘ 60s Relic Strat ever made in an Olympic White finish . It was supposed to look like it had aged for decades and had yellowed . So it was a prototype , and they had sent it to Keith , and Keith played it for a while and then he sent it back . I ’ m not sure why he sent it back , but he did , and it was kind of sitting around . I was working with Jake Black when we were developing the specs for the first guitar he was going to build me , and he said , “ Hey man , I ’ ve got this guitar laying around , can I set it up for you and see what you think ?” So we modified it , put a left-handed tremolo in it . What I liked about that more than the fact that Stevie Ray had his guitar like that was that it ’ s actually very functional . When the bar is way up here and you want to do a dive bomb , you can go all the way down to the body of the guitar and the strings are still ringing true , where if you ’ re up higher your arm or your hand