Shortly before a recent show at Nashville’s City Winery, Don Felder took a few minutes to talk to Premier Guitar’s John Bohlinger about everything from his first garage band with Stephen Stills to his years with the Eagles and beyond.
Felder is best known for slinging his iconic Gibson EDS-1275. The model shown here is his signature Gibson “Hotel California” model with separate outputs for both the 12-string and 6-string. The original inspiration for the dual outputs came when Felder attended a Chet Atkins concert when he was a kid and Atkins routed the lowest three strings to one amp and the top three strings to another allowing him to play (and amplify) “Dixie” and “Yankee Doodle Dandy” at the same time.
Felder has also been closely linked to holy grail-era Gibson Les Pauls. His original ’59 is safe at home but this Custom Shop ’59 reissue with custom-wound Seymour Duncan pickups joins him on the road.
This gold-bodied Strat came together through some online shopping Felder did one night. His tech, Norik Renson, helped pull it together with a Fender Eric Clapton signature neck and some Seymour Duncan pickups.
As a tribute to his friend Steve Lukather, Felder keeps an Ernie Ball Music Man Luke III in tow. He pulls it out when “You Don’t Have Me” from his album Road to Forever shows up on the setlist.
Though Felder has some amazing amps in his arsenal that have been worked on and rebuilt by famed electronics wizard Howard Dumble, he brings along this Fender ’65 Deluxe Reverb reissue.
A rather modest pedalboard sits at Felder’s feet. The signal starts by going into a Peterson Stomp Classic tuner and from there it hits an MXR Talk Box, Fulltone OCD, Boss CE-5 Chorus Ensemble, and finally a pair of Boss DD-3 Digital Delays. The delay marked with a “V” is preset for his tune “Victim of Love,” and the other is set for “Hotel California.” A Voodoo Lab Pedal Power 2 Plus squeezes in on the board as well.
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John Bohlinger is a Nashville-based multi-instrumentalist best known for leading the band on NBC's Nashville Star, serving as music director for the CMT Awards and specials on PBS and GAC, and of course for his appearances in PG Rig Rundown, Review Demo, Axes & Artifacts, and What Bohlinger Plays videos.
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