Neil Young

[Graham]

I'm watching a special on Biography about Neil Young, from 2004. It showed several pictures of Neil playing a black Guild electric.

Anybody know what it was?

G shield, one soft cutaway.

I can't find a photo yet.

 

[Kap'n]

Never seen Neil with a Guild electric. A LP of course, White Falcon, 6120, Broadcaster, Flying V, but no Guild.

I remember reading in an interview years ago that he had a Black Falcon (before the reissues came out, so I guess it's real).

Anything like this?

 

[Graham]

No, I paused the show and rewound it a few times to be sure.

It was a great shot of a Guild, no mistake.

 

[Graham]

It's being run again on Biography's Canada site. I'm going to PVR it and try and figure out how to grab a screen shot if I can.

If anybody knows how I can do that, let me know.

 

[Graham]

Try this about 19 seconds in. :mrgreen:

 

[jp]

What could it be?

Perhaps a DE-400/500 Duane Eddy, pre-1963? It's got a thin body and a curved single cutaway, and that Guild "G" logo denotes a 50s model. But I thought the Duane Eddy model came out in 1960. I don't know too much about'em.

 

[jp]

I'm going to PVR it and try and figure out how to grab a screen shot

How often does one get to pay back a favor so soon? :mrgreen:

In exchange for my newly acquired "quoting" skills, I can give you a quick tip on screen shots, Mr Graham!

All you have to do is hold the CTRL and Print buttons down at the same time. I usually hold down the CTRL button first, and then hit the Print Screen button at the moment I want the capture. If you use Photoshop, you can just open a new doc and paste it the screen in. Then you can manipulate, size, crop, etc. Sometimes if I want a bunch of screen captures, I'll just paste them into a word doc, on after the other.

 

[matsickma]

Hi Gram

Cool video. I grabbed a few key frames to study the guitar in question. My vote is that it is one of the high end Duane Eddy models. I think it is an early model T-500. The guitar feature give-aways as seen in at 9 seconds (i.e., image you posted) into the video: G-shield, Kolb tuners with white diamond shape buttons, pickup selector on the bass bout and the signature Duane Eddy Master Volume control on the treble cuaway bout with full size master Vol knob. This frame also show the guitar is a thin f-hole single cutaway and shows what appears to be by Neil's picking hand, the spring mechanism of a Bigsby. Additionally the truss rod cover doesn't have any markings suggesting it is pre a DE model.

The other key image of the guitar occurs at time 1:06. In this image you can see that the guitar has DeArmond model 200 pickups, has a sunburst finish, has binding around the f-holes and has the fancy block fret markers with the abalone triangles.

Check out Hans book around page 77 and 78. It looks like we need Han's to comment on this baby and any records of a sunburst T-500.

M

 

[Graham]

I'm going to PVR it and try and figure out how to grab a screen shot

How often does one get to pay back a favor so soon? :mrgreen:

In exchange for my newly acquired "quoting" skills, I can give you a quick tip on screen shots, Mr Graham!

All you have to do is hold the CTRL and Print buttons down at the same time. I usually hold down the CTRL button first, and then hit the Print Screen button at the moment I want the capture. If you use Photoshop, you can just open a new doc and paste it the screen in. Then you can manipulate, size, crop, etc. Sometimes if I want a bunch of screen captures, I'll just paste them into a word doc, on after the other.

I thank you very much! :wink:

 

[hansmoust]

Hello Graham,

Haven't seen the 'special' but from the photo that jp posted and the detail comments of Matsickma I would think it's probably not one of the early T-500s. All the ones I've been able to inspect had rather light sunbursts (like the sunburst one on page 78 of The Guild Guitar Book) and this one seems to be on the dark side, making you think it was a black guitar in the first place. There was a batch with slightly darker sunburst DE-500s made during 1963 and the guitar in the Neil Young Special might have been one of these:

Sincerely,

Hans Moust
http://www.guitarsgalore.nl

 

[Graham]

Very nice, Hans, thanks.

Would that have been a higher end guitar at the time? I'm thinking that pic was in the mid '60s around the time of The Squires? Neil would have still been in his teens.

 

[hansmoust]

Would that have been a higher end guitar at the time? I'm thinking that pic was in the mid '60s around the time of The Squires? Neil would have still been in his teens.

Definitely higher end! Retail for a sunburst one was $ 675.00. Not sure what young kids used to make in those days but to get one of these you probably had to have a pretty long 'paper route' or mow a lot of grass!

Sincerely,

Hans Moust
http://www.guitarsgalore.nl

 

[guildzilla]

After Buffalo Springfield cut "For What It's Worth" in 1967 or thereabouts, Neil didn't have to worry about mowing lawns any longer. All those guys were very young when they hit the jackpot. And Young and Stills seemingly ran to the music store as soon as that happened.

Anyone know what year the video came out?

 

[matsickma]

Hi Hans,

Is the truss rod cover on the guitar you posted the standard of that time? On the picture posted by jp there doesn't appear to be any marking on the truss cover. The lack of that feature was what biased me toward a T-500. However that upscaled 3-tone black edged sunburst finish certaintly is stronger visual signature.

It was news to me that Neil Young had a DE. One of our LTG members once mentioned that he was a big Stephen Stills fan and as such he was going to restore an amber colored DE for his collection. Do you have any info on the Stephen Stills DE guitar? It looks like Neil Young may have been the influence on Stephen Stills ownership of a DE.

M

 

[Graham]

Didn't Stills also play a D-40?

 

[hansmoust]

Is the truss rod cover on the guitar you posted the standard of that time?

You will find the regular Guild truss rod cover without the Duane Eddy name on guitars with 1963 serial numbers. That doesn't mean that they are 1963 guitars, but towards 1964 most Duane Eddy guitars had the regular Guild cover.

It was news to me that Neil Young had a DE. One of our LTG members once mentioned that he was a big Stephen Stills fan and as such he was going to restore an amber colored DE for his collection. Do you have any info on the Stephen Stills DE guitar?

Only have this scan of Steve Stills with a blonde DE-400 with small humbuckers and 'center raised' headstock:

If I remember correctly there was an interview with Duane Eddy in Guitar Player magazine in which he told that he lend out his DE-500 to one of the members of Buffalo Springfield. I don't think he said who it was, but he implied that the person who used it didn't take good care of it, so he had to have it restored. Maybe that's the guitar that the 'big Steve Stills fan' had seen?

Sincerely,

Hans Moust
http://www.guitarsgalore.nl

 

[john_kidder]

Hans you continue to amaze. What a store of lore you are.

 

[jp]

Oops! Graham, I forgot to tell you that if you want to capture a screen shot of just the current dialogue box that's open, use AL+ Print Screen. This is more useful, as it captures a larger image of the window at which you are looking. :wink:

 

[john_kidder]

Great tip, jp. I've been using SHIFT+PrtSc for years, then cropping the full screen image down to suit. Never new about ALT-PrtSc to capture a single window. Very helpful.

 

[Default]

Gadwin Printscreen is what I use. Instead of copying to the clipboard, it will put a screenshot in whatever format that you want into a folder of your choosing. Much less annoying than having to copy and paste.