… why I have three identical guitars …

Why do I have three identical guitars? I get that question almost without fail when people see my setup.

Well … I am not a guitar collector. These are relatively cheap Artcore hollow body guitars. They sound alright and play well. Isn’t one enough???

The thing is … I make up my own tunings. I started doing this way back when I started playing guitar when I was 14. I started by just dropping the E string down to ridiculously low notes (like the A below the E). This evolved over time and by the time I was in the band “Shed” I started creating complete guitar tunings.

I’ve never known the the notes for the tunings. I have intervals between the notes memorized.

I used to make my own electric guitars by piecing together various necks, pickups, and bodies. The first guitar I even owned (well … ok the SECOND) was a red Fender Strat. This guitar was hacked, chopped, soldered, gouged, sanded, painted, modified and otherwise mutated into what I called the “K1”.

You can find evidence of my insanity here and here.

I put together several guitars back in the day. No two guitars that I made would ever sound the same (output and harmonic content), due to my less than stringent manufacturing process.

When I started playing live a few years back in “The Misadventures of Two”, I needed a way to switch quickly between three main tunings on stage without drastically changing my tone. The Artcore guitars sounded good and were flexible enough to allow for the very heavy baritone strings that I use for some of the tunings.

So … now I have triplicate guitar redundancy. Whew!