GALLERY: John Porter's Guitar Collection
"This hard-to-find model was Gibson's first-ever cutaway flattop, and the first flattop with a pickup. Porter found the guitar held together by house paint and the folks at Voltage Guitars in Hollywood refurbished it in gold. It's a great songwriting guitar," says Porter, "and it's been on every record I've made in the last 15 years."
"1960 was the first year this model featured the slightly wider and slightly flatter blade neck, embedded with beautiful parallelograms. The guitar's PAF pickups run to separate output jacks that can be routed to two different amps at once. Porter describes the guitar's stereo sound as, B.B. King circa 1960, the Live At the Regal period."
"The K in this Martin's model name is for the Hawaiian koa wood. Koa guitars like this one were mostly for playing Hawaiian slack key," says Porter. Koa wood got very popular with Hawaiians, and then the world, which has made koa wood almost endangered. This guitar is in really perfect shape. Porter describes the sound of koa as," a little crisper than rosewood, similar in a way to maple."
"OM stands for Orchestral Model, and Deluxe denotes the special abalone inlays on the headstock and pickguard. Porter states," By today's standards, if you were to have a guitar like this made, it would probably be $25k because of the Brazilian wood."
"Porter actually owns three different versions of this guitar, casually known to guitarists as the Jimmy Reed guitar."I have this Silvertone one, he explains, then also a Kay and an Orpheum. They are all the same, except my other two are blonde. They have necks like a baseball bat and this one has the pickguard with the coat of arms." Porter used this guitar on Taj Mahal's " Senor Blues."
"The back and sides of this acoustic guitar are also koa wood, decorated with special abalone highlights. Martin made two of these special for Norm's Vintage Guitars, and this is the second one. I tried them both and I could've had number one, but I liked number two the best." The instrument was used on Ryan Adam's Love Is Hell. Keb Mo, who used the guitar on his album Suitcase, liked the 45-K so much he later had Martin create a Keb Mo model based on Porter's."
"This pale Telecaster's neck was carved from the same piece of rosewood as Porter's perfect Strat. This guitar, like most of my Fenders, uses 6105 frets," says Porter. "They are not wider but slightly higher than regular Fender frets. If you want to bend strings and stay in tune, 6105s are the ones to use."
"Purchased from guitarist Jimmy Rip, this Tele has toured with Tom Verlaine and appeared on Mick Jagger's solo records. But it's also been played on an unknown blues record by Lucky Peterson," brags Porter of one of his favorite guitar records. "That record is called Double Dealing and there is some absolutely killing guitar on that record."
"Unlike the 335, Gibson's 330 model is entirely hollow. It also boasts two fat P-90 pickups. This guitar replaced the 225 model, which they quit making when they brought this out," Porter explains. "I had Dean Parks play this one at a session and he left and went straight to Norm's [Rare Guitars] in L.A. and bought one straight away."
"My life as a guitar player and collector is the quest for the perfect Strat," Porter says, before introducing his favorite: a very personal remake of a 57 Strat. "I'd bought a piece of rosewood some years ago," Porter explains. "My friend Roger Giffin, who ran the Gibson custom shop, took the wood and made me three 57-style necks: a Strat neck, a Tele neck, and a Jazzmaster neck. No lacquer and no truss rods, because a good piece of rosewood is never gonna bend. This guitar's pickups are from Fender's 2004 limited edition 50th Anniversary1954 Strat reissue."
"I was out with Eric Clapton on his yacht in the Mediterranean," Porter begins. "We would stop off and do gigs and busk. He kept saying he wanted a Spanish guitar. In Barcelona we both picked out the same Alvarez guitar and each bought one. Years later he was using that guitar all the time and so asked to buy mine. He said, " I'd like to take one on the road and leave one at home for songwriting." I said, "no, but I will lend it to you. For the next few years I would see him playing it on the tele. He wrote "Tears in Heaven" on those guitars. Then he did that first big auction and he sold his for a ridiculous amount. When I heard he was doing another auction I said to him, "Hey you're not gonna sell my guitar?" He said, "no", but I thought, "I have to get that guitar back. So I call Lee, his guitar tech," and he says, "Eric's lost the guitar." " Lee offered me like a Ramirez something in exchange. No he hasn't lost it! I tell him. It's in his house in Antigua in the cupboard in his bedroom! Eric had forgotten he'd told me this. So months later the guitar just arrived at my house. I think he was a bit pissed off, but I got it back. Eric did finally send me a letter saying that he loved the guitar and had done a lot of writing on it."
"I was working in Austin on Los Lonely Boys "Heaven" at the time," recalls Porter," and I'd always loved Collings guitars. I had some Brazilian rosewood I'd had for years, so I took it to Collings and asked if they'd make me an OM21 with rosewood back, sides, and fingerboard -- all of which they didn't normally do. He let the wood sit on his desk for a year to see if it might bend, then he built it for me. It's a lovely, lovely guitar."
"The only bass Porter ever uses was born in the inaugural year of the model's famous split-pickup design. "I love the V neck", says Porter, who has used the bass in sessions with Buddy Guy, Otis Rush, and Jimmy Smith. The instrument performed its last live gig with Porter on bass for Roxy Music. I use it on sessions often, Porter says. It sounds incredible and I haven't changed the strings in 15 years."
"Porter's Woody Pro amp is a copy of the first ever Fender amps from the 1940s. Porter has used his on sessions with KebÑ? MoÑ?, Jimmy Smith, Taj Mahal, and B.B. King."
"Bought 10 years ago from California Vintage Guitars, this Les Paul with a single P-90 pickup is what Porter calls, "A real screamer". "Man it really screams!" This guitar was recently used on the new Dunwell album Blind Sighted Faith."
"Porter purchased this from Pete Townshend's guitar tech Alan Rogan 40 years ago for $70. The guitar was originally red and the bass pickup is the first ever demo model Mighty Mite Pickups. Known as JohnÃ??s Ã??lucky instrument, this is featured on Porter's work with Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Joe Walsh, and Lucky Peterson. It even powered the Smiths on several occasions. "A lot of what's considered Johnny Marr's chiming Rickenbackers are actually that guitar," Porter says. "I used it to play the slide part on "How Soon Is Now?"
"This handmade jazz guitar is finely detailed, with its pickup hovering over its body. "[Mark] Lacey is an English fellow in L.A.," Porter explains. "I used to hang out in Norm's Rare Guitars, and this Lacey guitar was always hanging on the wall between two D'Angelicos. One day I was playing the D'Angelicos but then picked this Lacey up, and it was better than those D'Angelicos, which were probably $30k-40k each. Of all the f-hole, carved-top guitars I own, I think this is the best." George Benson rented this guitar from Porter for recording. "I don't know why he didn't have his own guitar," says Porter."
"Despite sharing the 175's shape, this older guitar is 100-percent acoustic. When I bought it, it was completely butchered," says Porter, "three coats of house paint on it, pictures of the Beatles, and "All You Need Is Love" painted on the back. But I love these guitars, so I sent it back to London with Dick Knight [luthier, Knight Guitars], who refretted it, sprayed it black, and put binding in the f-holes like a junior L5. Plus he added the L5 pickguard."
"TDN stands for Thin Body/Double Pickups/Natural Wood. Porter notes that this is Gibson's first ever thin-body model, and that the blonde finish is rare."
"Eric Clapton tried to buy this one off of me a couple times," says Porter of this dot-neck." I refused," Porter notes," The 1958 to 1961 335-39's have these beautiful Mickey Mouse ears. You'll notice a few years after that they started getting much more pointy as the factory's template changed shape and got worn out. But the ears on this one are lovely."
"The third in Porter's rosewood trio features a special tailpiece he calls the "buzzstop". Porter explains, "The original Jazzmaster bridge was not right; improper tension of the strings over the bridge. On this model the buzzstop bar holds the strings down and makes it really great." Porter's custom Jazzmaster uses Japanese Fender pickups, which he prefers over the Americans."
"British guitarist and producer John Porter has recorded, produced, and played with everyone. He's won Grammys with B.B. King, Los Lonely Boys, Taj Mahal, and KebÑ? MoÑ?. He served as an auxiliary member of Roxy Music. He recorded and played guitar on every single by the Smiths. He collaborated extensively with, the one and only, Eric Clapton. Primarily a guitarist, Porter has acquired an insane collection of axes during his 40-year career. "I would always just bring a pile of guitars to a session," Porter laughs, "and let everyone use them all!" Here is a sampling of his best."
"This one-of-a-kind guitar was built to Porter's specifications by Gibson's master builder at the time Roger Giffin, in exchange for a tweed Fender Bassman. Porter laughs when speaking of the deal," I handed him a pair of P-90s from a 1952 Les Paul and told him I wanted an L5, but at the scale of a Les Paul. There is no other guitar like this one."
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