[Lincoln] It’s humbling, and it still feels
surreal. I feel like it could only be God, when
you look at the relatively short list of names
of people who have gotten to do that. It
could only be God sorting it out and allowing
it to happen. I’m thrilled! We worked really
hard on the guitar, and I’m really proud of it.
About halfway through the process I realized
that there were some other options available.
Fender, as a company, has changed since we
started working on this project. It changed
some of the possibilities, and I’m a possibilities
guy! One of the guys at Fender, Joey, said,
“Okay, forget everything we’ve done. What
do you really want?” And I said, “I want the
guitar to be where I could walk into any store
where they have one, grab it, and go play a
gig and not have to do anything to it.” He said,
“Awesome! What’s that look like? That will be
the guitar that’s available!” So, we went over
every single spec and nuance with a fine-tooth
comb. I’m actually playing the prototype now,
and it is killer! I absolutely love it! It feels great
and plays great. Anyone who has ever played
the original Eric Johnson signature model Strat
will understand when I say that it’s that kind of
caliber. All nitro-cellulose, quarter-sawn neck,
ash body (Eric’s was alder). I wanted to go with
ash, even though it’s a little more expensive.
That’s what I’ve used for years and I really like it.
We did the DiMarzio pickups that I’ve always
used and really, really love. I couldn’t find
anything that I thought sounded as good.
Again, that makes it a little more expensive,
but doing what I do: fingerpicking and talking
while I’m leading, the noise cancelling feature
is a big deal so that I don’t have to deal with
a bunch of hum from the guitar as I’m trying
to lead worship. To me, the DiMarzio’s are the
For overall functionality while playing live, the get a great sound out of it – if you know how Kemper is great for that. It’s a really great box, to get a great sound. If you don’t, it’s probably and has a lot of spillover features where effects not going to rescue you. But there are some carry over through patch changes, which is presets in all of them that you can fire up and very nice. I really like the Helix floor box as well. immediately sound great. a long-standing relationship with Steve Blucher
things that I wish they did better. My advice to [WM] You are working with Fender on a to continue that.
someone is to go demo the box and see which signature guitar. From the perspective of a one you like using the most, whether that is a worship artist, what does this mean to you?
May 2018
sounding like the real deal, so Fender said,
“Great! Let’s go with the DiMarzio’s.” I’ve had
and the guys at DiMarzio, so it’s nice to be able
Every box has strong points, and they all have
Kemper profiler, or a Helix, or a Fractal, you’ll
best noise-cancelling single coils, as far as
We put a two-post, floating tremolo on it,
which I wasn’t going to do originally, but it’s a
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