Guitar Design Quotes

For 20 years I've been screaming at these guitar companies, saying, 'It's abnormal to put your arm around an acoustic guitar that is about 6 to 8 inches deep.' Your arm reaches over, and you start to strum, and then all of a sudden you get a charley horse in your back. The older you get, the greater the charley horse.

My chops have always been sort of weak, because the right side of my body was paralyzed a little bit. It was very limiting. I have to design stuff I can play, and it took me a year and a half to figure out how to hold a guitar pick.

I don't really play overseas stuff. I'm a bit of a dinosaur in that way. You gonna improve on a Les Paul or Fender Stratocaster? Those are perfect designs, and there is nothing to add really.

A Strat was a thing of wonder .. when I was 14 or 15, the Shadows were a big influence, and they had the first Strats that came to England. I like to play all kinds of guitars, but I wasn't getting the sound I really wanted until I got a Stratocaster

Every guitarist I would cross paths with would tell me that I should have a flashy guitar, whatever the latest fashion model was, and I used to say, 'Why? Mine works, doesn't it? It's a piece of wood and six strings, and it works.'

Martin guitars have now brought out, you know, on a more traditional level, the Stephen Stills' model of Martin guitars. It's beautiful. I just went inside. I bought one immediately.

I designed a guitar for Ibanez and then they started manufacturing it - it's called the Jem - it's 26 years old and I still play it. As a kid I liked Les Pauls and Strats, but they had limitations for the kind of playing I wanted to do.

Instead of buying a guitar for $2,000 or $2,500 - I'm not sure how much these are going for - but it's maybe $300 or something like that. It's more for beginners and stuff like that. Obviously it's not hitting the pros. And you can't get the Piezo pickup and the color-changing paint and the inlays and all the fancy things that my signature guitars offer, but you can get the general feel of the guitar - and the body style. It's cool.

There would be no rock and roll or rhythm and blues without Leo Fenders' contribution ... the tone is everything

What I was drawn to the most about the Flying V was the weight distribution with the way I move on stage. The V just swings perfectly. It's a great way to stay balanced, because I like to dance, and I'm a bit of a flail-er. The guitar centers me, and for me, it's a really good balance.

There's something about the Strat's shape that is at once masculine and feminine

I have a Gibson Thinline that I designed the body shape of, which I used a lot on the 'Fanatic' album that I'm going to shake out.