Clapton Guitar Fest II

[ARPRINCE]

Wow!

First, my reference was to the CUMULATIVE references to the chubby chick being both an object of affection and an inspiration for so many songs - of which many assume to be love songs. And Wonderful Tonight IS considered by MANY to be a wonderfully poignant love song! Swoon...

As far as what you were aware of, or were unaware, I am totally unaware! Worse still, I didn't care (does that sound sufficiently detached? ;-)) In other words, it was not in reference to YOU at all! So settle down!)

You did quote me originally when you responded so I was "correctly" assuming that your response was in reference to my post.

[pauln]

As a lead guitar player for 35 years I'll just say that EC's best work was done early on ("Sunshine of Your Love" and "Crossroads", etc). I remember hearing "Lay Down Sally" and "Who Shot The Sheriff" and thinking WTF? The worst was the acoustic lounge version of "Layla" - my god, what happened to this guy?

[oldbuckster]

Two points, The Guitar Fest isn't about Eric, it's about the Guitar, and the different ways of presenting it, and the styles of music that can be played with it, it's not just about Eric .................... Eric Clapton is a Blues player, no more, no less, ................ I don't say he's a great player, his Guitar playing friends say he's great, they know better than I ............... If you don't rank Eric Clapton in your top ten Guitarist List, I question your choices ................... A player that many talked about at a ripe old age of 17, has walked down the dark road of Rock n' Roll, returned, and has had a great career ever since, a living Legend......and , I feel quite lucky to have been able to follow his career as long as I have ...................... Not bad for an Ol' Yardbird..................EH !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[flannj]

Two points, The Guitar Fest isn't about Eric, it's about the Guitar, and the different ways of presenting it, and the styles of music that can be played with it, it's not just about Eric .................... Eric Clapton is a Blues player, no more, no less, ................ I don't say he's a great player, his Guitar playing friends say he's great, they know better than I ............... If you don't rank Eric Clapton in your top ten Guitarist List, I question your choices ................... A  player that many talked about at a ripe old age of 17, has walked down the dark road of Rock n' Roll, returned, and has had a great career ever since, a living Legend......and , I feel quite lucky to have been able to follow his career as long as I have ...................... Not bad for an Ol' Yardbird..................EH !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I agree OB that the great thing about this festival is the wide variety of hugely talented guitarists in the lineup.

I wish I could have gone but I will be buying the DVD.

- Jim

[BigStewMan]

i still regret selling a 1976 Fender Telecaster, thinline, semi-hollowbody--that was a beautiful guitar--but i was younger and stupid. One of my favorites, Steve Howe of Yes, has a 1964 gibson ES175D as his favorite. 

i've always liked brian may from Queen, here is some very interesting info about his guitar

Unlike the primary instruments of most musicians, May and his father, Harold, built the original Red Special guitar themselves. They began to work on the guitar in August of 1963. Most of the wood came from an old fireplace mantel that a friend of the family was about to throw away. The neck was hand-shaped until it reached the desired form, which was difficult due to the age and quality of the wood. According to May, there are two wormholes in the guitar.[1]

The neck was finished with a 24 fret oak fingerboard. Each of the position inlays were hand shaped from mother-of-pearl buttons. May decided to position them in a personal way: two dots at 7th and 19th fret and three at 12th and 24th.

The body was made from oak, blockboard and Mahogany Veneer; the final result was a sort of Semi-acoustic guitarthe central block is glued to the sides and covered with two mahogany sheets to give it the appearance of a solid-body guitar. White shelf edging was then applied as binding. It was then completed with three pickups and a custom-made bridge. May purchased a set of Burns Tri-Sonic pickups but re-wound them with reverse wound/reverse polarity and "potted" the coils with Araldite epoxy to reduce microphonics. He originally wound his own pickups, as he had for his first guitar, but he did not like the resulting sound using bending because of the polarity of these pickups: alternating North-South instead of all North.

The tremolo system is made from an old hardened-steel knife-edge shaped into a V and two motorbike valve springs to counter the string tension. The tension of the springs is adjustable by screwing the bolts, which run through the middle of the springs, in or out via 2 small access holes next to the rear strap button. To reduce friction, the bridge was completed with rollers to allow the strings to return perfectly in tune after using the tremolo arm, (the arm itself was from a bicycle saddlebag holder with a plastic knitting needle tip). For the same reason, at the other end of the neck the strings pass over a zero fret and through a bakelite string guide.

Originally the guitar had a built in distortion circuit, adapted from a mid-1960s Vox distortion unit. The switch for this was in front of the phase switches. May soon discovered that he preferred the sound of a Vox AC30 distorting at full power, so the circuit was removed. The switch hole is now covered by a mother-of-pearl star inlay, but was originally covered by insulation tape.

The name Red Special came from the red/brown color of the guitar after it was stained and painted with numerous layers of Rustin's plastic coating.

The overall amount May spent on his guitar was £17.50 

[Macho Nacho]

As a lead guitar player for 35 years I'll just say that EC's best work was done early on ("Sunshine of Your Love" and "Crossroads", etc). I remember hearing "Lay Down Sally" and "Who Shot The Sheriff" and thinking WTF? The worst was the acoustic lounge version of "Layla" - my god, what happened to this guy?

I'll just say your best work was done in the first 2 minutes of your "35 year career". The remaining 18,396,000 minutes are best decribed as painful to forgetable. My god what happened to you?