
Don Peake wields one of his longtime companions, the Gibson ES-335 model.
The Wrecking Crew guitarist played with the Everly Brothers, the Jackson 5, Marvin Gaye, and many more. He shares memories of hanging with Elvis, the Beatles, and the Stones, long sessions with Phil Spector, recording with Sonny and Cher, and spitballing now-iconic guitar lines ingrained in music history.
The Wrecking Crew was a group of Los Angeles session players who shaped hundreds of hit records in the '60s and early '70s. The list of guitarists often named as crew members includes Tommy Tedesco, James Burton, Glen Campbell, Al Casey, Barney Kessel, and Howard Roberts. More rarely mentioned is Don Peake, who was right there in the studio trenches with them, creating timeless tracks for Phil Spector and others.
Peake later cut hits for Motown as well. If you listen to classic pop radio, you have doubtless heard the iconic opening wah-wah lick to Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On" and the guitar line doubling the bass on the Jackson 5's "I Want You Back," but probably never knew it was Peake playing those parts.
Though he appears briefly in The Wrecking Crew movie, it's safe to say Don Peake's place in the world of historic session guitarists is shamefully unsung. It's long past time for this purveyor of iconic guitar parts to be recognized. While many of his peers have departed, Peake luckily remains with us, ready to relay some amazing stories, which he does in this Premier Guitar interview.
"Elvis would come in three nights a week. We'd sit with him in the balcony on the break." āDon Peake
Don Peake was born in Los Angeles, California, on June 7, 1940. During high school, he played clarinet and sang with an a cappella choir. Picking up the ukulele at 16, he eventually moved to guitar. When word got out he could play Gene Vincent's "Be-Bop-A-Lula," it was recommended he try out for a gig with rockabilly singer Jackie Lee Cochran.
"I went to a night club called the Rag Doll," Peake recalls. "In the parking lot was a line of guitarists waiting to audition." Cochran fortuitously asked Peake if he knew "Be-Bop-A-Lula," and an affirmative answer helped him clinch the gig. Opening night, after playing that song, Cochran asked the young guitarist what else he knew. "Nothing," he replied.
Peake managed to keep the job, but to fill in the gaps he quickly signed up for lessons at Clara Joyce Sherman's School of Music in Hollywood. As luck would have it, his guitar teacher was Ray Pohlman, who would go on to be a regular guitarist and bassist in the Wrecking Crew. "Ray was a jazz guitarist who played with the Billy May Orchestra," he says. "He taught me to play and mentored me. I bought my blonde, 1946 Gibson ES-350 with the single pickup from him." A special guitar, indeed: The ES-350 Peake bought from Pohlman was a rare one-pickup jazz model made in 1946. Gibson started making the iconic two-pickup models in 1947.
Here's Peake at work in studio, putting his skill at reading music to work. This is a still from the documentary film The Wrecking Crew.
Working with Cochran helped cement the young guitarist's reputation as a rock 'n' roll player, which led to a gig with Lance LeGault, Elvis Presley's movie stand-in. "LeGault loved Ray Charles' songs and had his sax player write out 'Hallelujah, I Love Her So,' 'Drown in My Own Tears,' etc.," says Peake. "I learned the exact guitar parts, which came in handy later. Elvis would come in three nights a week. We'd sit with him in the balcony on the break."
Learning to read music while playing rock 'n' roll gigs provided Peake a perfect primer for later working with the similarly schooled Wrecking Crew, who also helped create much of the era's teenage music. Another bit of serendipity was hanging out with a young Phil Spector.
"Phil was studying with Howard Roberts," Peake remembers. "I started studying with both Barney Kessel and Roberts. Howard would write out arpeggios for me, while Barney was 'Mr. Time.' He would say, 'You've got a rod connecting your forearm to your foot. You have to tap your foot and keep your arm moving. It doesn't matter if you miss the chord, keep going. Never stop your right hand.'" Spector gave Peake a T-Bone Walker LP, adding a blues influence to the guitarist's jazz and rock background. "T-Bone had those wonderful moving 9th chords," he says.
Shown here in 1972 at an RCA Hollywood Studio session, Peake holds a modified ES-335 that began life as a 12-string, owned by John Phillips of the Mamas & the Papas. Fellow sessioner Paul Herman got it from Phillips and cut down the headstock and painted it black before selling it to Peake, who then used the instrument as his primary studio axe.
Courtesy of Don Peake
Spector's friend Marshall Leib, from his group the Teddy Bears, told Peake that the Everly Brothers were looking for a guitar player. Playing with the Everlys would be his first big gig and place him at the center of the musical revolution taking place in early '60s England.
"We flew to London," he recalls. "After the gig, we went to a night club where a pretty good band was playing." Still wearing their matching gray suits, it was clear that Peake and company were a band as well, so the local performers joined them on their break. Among those locals were Albert Lee and Eric Clapton. In his autobiography, Clapton describes Peake as one of the American guitarists who impressed him as being technically better than he was.
On the next trip to England, the Everly Brothers headlined a tour featuring the Rolling Stones, Bo Diddley, and Little Richard. "As I was watching one of the other acts, I noticed a black man in a full-length peignoir across the stage, holding a bible," he says. "One of the stagehands said, 'That's Little Richard Penniman.'"
"Brother Ray came in and sat down at the piano. He said, 'Do you know 'Hallelujah, I Love Her So?'ācut back to Lance LeGault, making me learn those Ray Charles songsāI said, 'Absolutely.'" āDon Peake
Brothers and band soon started hanging with the Beatles and Stones in Hamburg. "The Star-Club had three stages," says Peake. "We traded sets: Everly Brothers, Rolling Stones, Beatles. Jim Gordon came over as the drummer. He went on to play with Clapton."
During his Everly Brothers tenure, Peake had to leave his 1951 Fender Broadcaster at home. "The Everly Brothers were sponsored by Gibson, so we weren't allowed to use a Fender guitar onstage," he explains. "They gave me a brand new, bright red SG. We were strumming hard, and it would constantly break the 3rd or 4th string. I didn't have a spare guitar, so I would finish the show playing an octave higher."
Once back in Los Angeles, producer Jimmie Haskell heard about Peake and arranged for him to play with Ricky Nelson. "I played on the Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet sessions for a little while," he says. "James Burton was there at the same time. He came in the studio one day and started bending strings. I said, 'How did you do that?' He said, 'I've got an E string, where my G string is supposed to be.' That was the first time we saw anybody play a light G string."
Don Peake bought this blonde 1946 Gibson ES-350 with a single pickup from Ray Pohlman, his guitar mentor and Wrecking Crew bandmate. This rare jazz model was a precursor to the two-pickup model introduced in 1947. Peake's chart-reading and big-band chops were honed while playing in the jazz band at L.A. City College, where this photo was taken in 1960.
Photo courtesy of Don Peake
Peake's sessions with the Wrecking Crew started around 1966 with the Righteous Brothers' "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'." That record would define Spector's "Wall of Sound" and become one of the most played radio tunes of all time. A sizable chunk of that "wall" was the guitar section, including Barney Kessel, Howard Roberts, Bill Pittman, Tommy Tedesco, and Peake, all playing together.
"Tommy or Barney would be the first chair," Peake recalls. "There were always three guys playing miked Gibson L-5s. I bought mine from Howard Roberts. The board at Gold Star only had seven channels, so they had all the guitar mics running together on one channel. Phil would have us move around to get the balance. He would rehearse us for three hours. Howard Roberts once said, 'Man, you come out here and play this. I'm getting tired.'"
Peake is featured on another major hit that sounds like a Spector production, but isn't. "One day, I'm up at Armin Steiner's studio and a shaggy-haired guy comes in with a beautiful girl in bangs," he relates. "The producer said, 'This is Caesar and Cleo.' The song was 'Baby Don't Go.' I did the tremolo strumming part."
"Don was the best reader of the three of us and would help us with any problems reading charts." āLouie Shelton
A week later, Ahmet Ertegun heard the duo, changed their name to Sonny and Cher, and ordered a full album, which included the massive hit "I Got You Babe."
"That tune is me on my Fender Telecaster with a lot of reverb," says Peake. "Sonny produced the records. He'd been a gofer for Phil Spector and, like Phil, he was into lots of reverb and long rehearsals. Barney Kessel was sitting next to me. He had played jazz with Charlie Parker and Lady Day [Billie Holiday]. After playing this one F7chord for three hours he said, 'Sonny, if a doctor told me I had only two weeks to live, I'd spend them with you because each moment is like an eternity'."
In 1964, Peake landed a gig with a man whose music had inspired him as a teenager. While recording at Gold Star Studios, he ran into his friend Arthur Wright on the phone with Ray Charles' manager Joe Adams. Wright put Peake on the call.
Don Peake with his boss, the great Ray Charles, in the dressing room before a show in Wichita, Kansas, circa 1993.
Courtesy of Don Peake
"Adams said, 'Ray Charles is looking for a guitar player," he recalls. "We've tried 35 guys and can't find anybody who can play the blues, read music, play jazz, and already knows Ray's old songs, because we've lost some of that music.' I said, 'I'm white.' He said, 'Can you play?' I said, 'Yes.' He said, 'Get down here.'"
Peake grabbed his Deluxe Reverb, Gibson L-5, and ES-350, and drove to the studio, where he hauled all three up a flight of stairs. With his hands full, he kicked open the rehearsal room door, slamming it into the wall.
"Staring at me were five saxophones, four trombones, four trumpets, bass, drums, an empty piano chair, and an empty guitar chair," he says. "I'd been playing with the jazz band at L.A. City College, so I knew how to read big band charts. The drummer called an up-tempo Count Basie blues and I started playing that L-5 as fast as I could. Leroy Cooper, the baritone player, leaned over to Lily Fort, the lead singer of the Raelettes, and said, 'That boy is serious.' Then they said, 'Get out your electric.' I picked up the 350 and we did 'Jumping with Symphony Sid.' Brother Ray came in and sat down at the piano. He said, 'Do you know 'Hallelujah, I Love Her So?'ācut back to Lance LeGault, making me learn those Ray Charles songsāI said, 'Absolutely.'"
Joe Adams informed Peake that Charles wanted to hire him at $200 a week. "I told him the Everly Brothers were paying $225," says Peake. Adams said he would have to talk to Mr. Charles. Fearing he had blown the gig of a lifetime, Peake drove to his mother's house, where he lived when he was off the road. "She said, 'Joe Adams called," he recalls. "They're going to pay you $225, but give you a separate envelope for the $25, so the rest of the band doesn't know about it.'" Thus, Don Peake became the first white guitarist to play with Ray Charles.
Don Peake peeks out of a Sonny and Cher sandwich while backing up the iconic duo at L.A.'s Hollywood Bowl in 1966.
Courtesy of Don Peake
Before they hit the road, Charles recorded a live album. During the show, he began playing the introduction to "Makin' Whoopee"āa song for which there was no chart. "I had never played it with him," says Peake. "When he goes up a half-step on the dominant you can hear me slide into it. I'm learning the song onstage while they're recording it."
Peake continued recording with Charles even after he stopped touring with him, cutting classics like "America the Beautiful" and "Crying Time." He can be heard loud and clear on a lesser-known Charles cover, "Blue Moon of Kentucky," playing the signature intro and the solo over the fade. Toward the end of the track, you hear Charles exhorting the guitarist, "Play it! Play it 'til it gets good." Rather than being critical, according to Peake, he is encouraging him. "He's saying, 'Keep going. It's good,'" Peake says.
While "Blue Moon of Kentucky" is a deep cut, the guitarist's soulful blues licks on the massive Charles hit "Let's Go Get Stoned" have been heard by countless millions through the decades. Though the tone sounds Fender-ish, the guitar was an old Gibson ES-175. "I restrung it with real light strings," Peake explains. "I ended up not liking it, but I did use it on that recording."
In 1966, Peake was asked to go on the road with Bobby Darin, but told Darin he wanted to stay in town and be an arranger. A week went by before he got the call from the singer's managers. "I went to their office, where they played me 'If I Were a Carpenter' by Tim Hardin," he says. "They wanted strings and I'd never written for strings before. I went home, opened up the Russell Garcia arranging book [The Professional Arranger Composer], and feverishly figured out how to write the string quartet. When we recorded at Gold Star, I stood near the studio door so I could get out quickly. When the strings came in, I thought, 'That sounds all right,' and started walking back into the studio." This Bobby Darin hit would mark the beginning of an arranging and scoring career that would ultimately replace Peake's session work, but the guitarist still had some classics to cut.
"There are certain guitar licks or solos that always give me goose bumps, and Don Peake's opening part on 'Let's Get It On' is one of those." āDenny Tedesco
By 1969, Motown had started recording in Los Angeles. Diana Ross was going to produce the first Jackson 5 record with Ben Barrett as contractor. For the Ross-produced record, Barrett put together a band that included Peake, David T. Walker, and Louie Shelton on guitar, Wilton Felder on bass, and Gene Pello on drums. "On 'I Want You Back,' I doubled the bass line with Wilton," he recalls. "I had to read it."
Peake was quite good at that, Louie Shelton recalls. "Don was the best reader of the three of us and would help us with any problems reading charts," Shelton says.
In addition to doubling one of the most famous bass parts of all time, Peake appears on much of the Jackson's subsequent output. That's his Coral electric sitar on "Maybe Tomorrow" from Third Album and his early fuzz pedal shaping the memorable distorted part on "ABC." "I also had a Cry Baby wah," says Peake. "It said Thomas Organ Company, Sepulveda, California, on the bottom." He doesn't remember if it was him or Wah Wah Watson, aka Melvin Ragin, playing the wah part on the Jacksons' "Never Can Say Goodbye," but he is very clear about who played the memorable intro to Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On." As with many Peake performances, there's a fascinating backstory.
"There was a fabulous guitarist named RenƩ Hall who was also a great arranger," he relates. "Hall started using me because of my blues playing. He actually had me come in and finish a B.B. King album. B.B. had walked away from the record company and wouldn't talk to them. They had already recorded the songs but needed guitar fills, so I did them."
Peake stands beside bassist Wilton Felder on an early Jackson 5 session. Peake played essential parts on some of the group's early, barnstorming hits.
Courtesy of Don Peake
In 1973, Hall was the arranger on "Let's Get It On," working at Motown's L.A. studio on Romaine Street. "RenƩ said, 'I want you to make up something at the beginning'," says Peake. "I turned on my wah-wah pedal and played." As was so often the case in those days, Peake's name was left off the album. Wah Wah Watson was on the road with Gaye at the time, so everyone assumed he played the part. "It's me," says Peake. "I made a terrible mistake about 15 seconds in," he says. "I got excited and hit the open G string." (Editor's note: Actually, it's 13 seconds in, and you can hear it clearly.)
"There are certain guitar licks or solos that always give me goose bumps and Don Peake's opening part on 'Let's Get It On' is one of those," says Denny Tedesco, director of The Wrecking Crew movie and son of Tommy Tedesco.
In addition to playing on some of the biggest hits of the day, Peake played on numerous movie scores. Though his excellent reading skills no doubt played a part, sometimes it was his rock 'n' roll heart that landed him the job.
"I played for Elmer Bernstein on the Steve McQueen movie Baby the Rain Must Fall," he says. "Bernstein called me because, though Tommy Tedesco could pretend to be musically ignorant, I just naturally came up with stuff that was unsophisticated. Bernstein said, 'Just do whatever you want.' On the soundtrack, you'll hear me playing all this crazy guitar."
As the 1970s progressed, with guitarists like Larry Carlton, Jay Graydon, and Steve Lukather coming up, sessions began drying up for Peake's generation of musicians. The guitarist looked toward composing and arranging for the next chapter of his musical life, but to be successful he found he had to fully commit. He began studying arranging and composing with Albert Harris, a famed Hollywood orchestrator, and called composer/conductor and frequent session contractor Ben Barrett to bow out of his studio guitarist role. "He didn't say the words, 'Are you out of your fucking mind?'ābut I know he was thinking it," says Peake. Sane and serious, he sold the instruments in his cartage trunk and devoted himself to a career that would provide compositions and arrangements for more than 50 movies and television shows, including Knight Rider and My Two Dads.
For the last decade, Peake has been a professor at Los Angeles' Bridges Academy, a school for gifted children that have learning differences, such as autism and ADHD. "I teach guitar, jazz, and blues," he says. "Our music program allows these children to put both sides of their brain together. They get better at their studies."
As of this writing, Peake is still playing with some of the surviving members of the Wrecking Crew, including Chuck Berghofer, the bassist who played the slithery part on Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Are Made for Walking."
"Don Randi is playing piano," he says. "The drummer is Ed Green. We do a Glen Campbell tribute, because we played on his records. We also do a Sonny and Cher song. We were just about to go on the road, when COVID hit."
This just scratches the surface of Peake's extraordinary life. Did we mention he was a champion race car driver? While there may be no official designation of who was in the Wrecking Crew, by any definition, Don Peake deserves mention as a member of that historic assembly. Maybe even more important is the mark his guitar playing left on memorable Motown tunes that have become embedded not just in music history, but in the culture at large.
Don Peake Essential Listening:
Description: Don Peake recorded tracks with Ray Charles even after he stopped touring with the pianist, cutting classics like "America the Beautiful" and "Crying Time." Peake can be heard loud and clear on a lesser-known Charles cover, "Blue Moon of Kentucky," playing the signature intro and the solo over the fade. Toward the end of the track, you hear Charles saying to Peake with enthusiasm, "Play it! Play it 'til it gets good."
Description: Peake played the guitar line doubling the bass on the Jackson 5's "I Want You Back." In addition to complementing one of the most famous bass parts of all time, Peake appears on much of the Jackson 5's subsequent output. He plays a Coral electric sitar on "Maybe Tomorrow" from 1970's Third Album, and that's also Peake's early fuzz pedal shaping the memorable distorted part on "ABC" from the same year.
Description: In 1966, Peake was asked to go on the road with Bobby Darin, but declined because he wanted to stay put and be an arranger. A week later, Peake got a call from the singer's managers to arrange strings for "If I Were a Carpenter." Peake had never written parts for strings before, but quickly figured out how to write for a string quartet. This Bobby Darin hit would mark the beginning of an arranging and scoring career that would ultimately replace Peake's session work.
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After eight years, New Orleans artist Benjamin Booker returns with a new album and a redefined relationship to the guitar.
Itās been eight years since the New Orleans-based artist released his last album. Heās back with a record that redefines his relationship to the guitar.
It is January 24, and Benjamin Bookerās third full-length album, LOWER, has just been released to the world. Itās been nearly eight years since his last record, 2017ās Witness, but Booker is unmoved by the new milestone. āI donāt really feel anything, I guess,ā he says. āMaybe Iām in shock.ā
That evening, Booker played a release celebration show at Euclid Records in New Orleans, which has become the musicianās adopted hometown. He spent a few years in Los Angeles, and then in Australia, where his partner gave birth to their child, but when he moved back to the U.S. in December 2023, it was the only place he could imagine coming back to. āI just like that the city has kind of a magic quality to it,ā he says. āIt just feels kind of like youāre walking around a movie set all the time.ā
Witness was a ruminative, lonesome record, an interpretation of the writer James Baldwinās concept of bearing witness to atrocity and injustice in the United States. Mavis Staples sang on the title track, which addressed the centuries-old crisis of police killings and brutality carried out against black Americans. It was a significant change from the twitchy, bluesy garage-rock of Bookerās self-titled 2014 debut, the sort of tunes that put him on the map as a scrappy guitar-slinging hero. But Booker never planned on heroism; he had no interest in becoming some neatly packaged industry archetype. After Witness, and years of touring, including supporting the likes of Jack White and Neil Young, Booker withdrew.
He was searching for a sound. āI was just trying to find the things that I liked,ā he explains. L.A. was a good place for his hunt. He went cratedigging at Stellaremnant for electronic records, and at Artform Studio in Highland Park for obscure jazz releases. It took a long time to put together the music he was chasing. āFor a while, I left guitar, and was just trying to figure out what I was going to do,ā says Booker. āI just wasnāt interested in it anymore. I hadnāt heard really that much guitar stuff that had really spoke to me.ā
āFor a while, I left guitar, and was just trying to figure out what I was going to do. I just wasnāt interested in it anymore.ā
LOWER is Bookerās most sensitive and challenging record yet.
Among the few exceptions were Tortoiseās Jeff Parker and Dave Harrington from Darkside, players who moved Booker to focus more on creating ambient and abstract textures instead of riffs. Other sources of inspiration came from Nicolas Jaar, Loveliescrushing, Kevin Shields, Sophie, and JPEGMAFIA. When it came to make LOWER (which released on Bookerās own Fire Next Time Records, another nod to Baldwin), he took the influences that he picked up and put them onto guitarāmore atmosphere, less ānoodly stuffā: āThis album, I was working a lot more with images, trying to get images that could get to the emotion that I was trying to get to.ā
The result is a scraping, aching, exploratory album that demonstrates that Bookerās creative analysis of the world is sharper and more potent than ever. Opener āBlack Oppsā is a throbbing, metallic, garage-electronic thrill, running back decades of state surveillance, murder, and sabotage against Black community organizing. āLWA in the Trailer Parkā is brighter by a slim margin, but just as simultaneously discordant and groovy. The looped fingerpicking of āPompeii Statuesā sets a grounding for Booker to narrate scenes of the homelessness crisis in Los Angeles. Even the acoustic strums of āHeavy on the Mindā are warped and stretched into something deeply affecting; ditto the sunny, garbage-smeared ā60s pop of āShow and Tell.ā But LOWER is also breathtakingly beautiful and moving. āSlow Dance in a Gay Barā and āHope for the Night Timeā intermingle moments of joy and lightness amid desperation and loneliness.
Booker worked with L.A.-based hip-hop and electronic producer Kenny Segal, trading stems endlessly over email to build the record. While he was surrounded by vintage guitars and amps to create Witness, Booker didnāt use a single amplifier in the process of making LOWER: He recorded all his guitars direct through an interface to his DAW. āItās just me plugging my old Epiphone Olympic into the computer and then using software plugins to manipulate the sounds,ā says Booker. For him, working digitally and āin the boxā is the new frontier of guitar music, no different than how Hendrix and Clapton used never-heard-before fuzz pedals to blow peopleās minds. āWhen I look at guitar players who are my favorites, a lot of [their playing] is related to the technology at the time,ā he adds.
āWhen I look at guitar players who are my favorites, a lot of [their playing] is related to the technology at the time.ā
Benjamin Booker's Gear
Booker didnāt use any amps on LOWER. He recorded his old Epiphone Olympic direct into his DAW.
Photo by Trenity Thomas
Guitars
- 1960s Epiphone Olympic
Effects
- Soundtoys Little AlterBoy
- Soundtoys Decapitator
- Soundtoys Devil-Loc Deluxe
- Soundtoys Little Plate
āI guess I have a problem with anything being too sugary. I wanted a little bit of ugliness.ā
Inspired by a black metal documentary in which an artist asks for the cheapest mic possible, Booker used only basic plugins by Soundtoys, like the Decapitator, Little AlterBoy, and Little Plate, but the Devil-Loc Deluxe was the key for he and Segal to unlock the distorted, āthree-dimensional worldā they were seeking. āBecause I was listening to more electronic music where thereās more of a focus on mixing than I would say in rock music, I think that I felt more inspired to go in and be surgical about it,ā says Booker.
Part of that precision meant capturing the chaos of our world in all its terror and splendor. When he was younger, Booker spent a lot of time going to the Library of Congress and listening to archival interviews. On LOWER, he carries out his own archival sound research. āI like the idea of being able to put things like that in the music, for people to just hear it,ā says Booker. āEven if they donāt know what it is, theyāre catching a glimpse of life that happened at that time.ā
On āSlow Dance in a Gay Bar,ā there are birds chirping that he captured while living in Australia. Closer āHope for the Night Timeā features sounds from Los Angelesā Grand Central Market. āSame Kind of Lonelyā features audio of Bookerās baby laughing just after a clip from a school shooting. āI guess I have a problem with anything being too sugary,ā says Booker. āI wanted a little bit of ugliness. We all have our regular lives that are just kind of interrupted constantly by insane acts of violence.ā
That dichotomy is often difficult to compute, but Booker has made peace with it. āYou hear people talking about, āI donāt want to have kids because the world is falling apart,āā he says. āBut I mean, I feel like itās always falling apart and building itself back up. Nothing lasts forever, even bad times.ā
YouTube It
To go along with the record, Booker produced a string of music videos influenced by the work of director Paul Schrader and his fascination with āa troubled character on the edge, reaching for transcendence.ā That vision is present in the video for lead single āLWA in the Trailer Park.ā
Note the cavity cover on the back, which houses the components of Andy Summersā mid-boost system.
Weāve covered Andyās iconic guitar and what makes it so special, so now weāll get to building our own.
Hello and welcome back to Mod Garage for the second installment of the Andy Summers Telecaster wiring. We covered many of the details of this unique guitar last time, so now weāll jump right in to assembling your own.
In general, you can use any Telecaster and convert it to Andy Summersā specs. If you want to stay as close as possible to the original guitar, the way to go is an alder bodyājust like Andyās, which is 2-pieceāwith a 3-tone sunburst finish and white double binding.
The neck should be quarter-sawn, 1-piece maple with a C profile, 21 vintage-style frets, and a 7.25" fretboard radius. Of course, you can choose your own specs here, too. The original guitar has a brass nut rather than bone or plastic, and it should be no problem to find a brass nut blank for a Telecaster. You will need different tools to work on it compared to bone, plastic, or graphite, so keep this in mind. If you do not have the right tools or donāt feel comfortable making nuts, you should leave this task to your local guitar tech. Summersā guitar has Schaller M6 tuning machines, which are still available from the German Schaller company, and two chrome butterfly string trees. You may not really need two of themāusually one for the B and the high E string will do the trick, especially with a well-made nut.
The original has a heavy brass bridge plate with six individual brass saddles, which will increase overall weight significantly. You can still buy this type of brass bridge from several companies, but there are much lighter bridges on the market.
The stereo output jack is installed in a rectangular chrome plate, like on a Les Paul, which I think is superior to the typical Telecaster jack cup. Interestingly, the plate on Summersā guitar is only held by two of four screws, but do yourself a favor and use all four to make this spot as strong as possible. You should attach the plate really tight, especially when you use an output jack with a tight grip for the plug.
āElectronically, there is nothing too specialized that you will need for the controls.ā
The rest of the hardware is chrome and standard: two regular strap buttons, a standard Telecaster control plate, ā60s Telecaster flat-top knobs, a black ā60s-style top-hat switch knob on the 3-way pickup selector switch, and two flat-lever mini-toggle switches. You should have no problem getting all of these parts from any guitar shop. The pickguard is a 3-ply mint green pickguard with a standard humbucker routing for the neck pickup.
Electronically, there is nothing too specialized that you will need for the controls: a standard 3-way pickup selector switch, two 250k audio pots for master volume and master tone, a gain control pot for the booster, and two additional mini DPDT on-on toggle switches for switching the booster on and off and for the phase control of the bridge pickup. The resistance of the gain control pot depends on the booster you want to use: e.g. for the Fender Clapton mid-boost kit, a 500k type will work great.
For the bridge pickup, there is a standard early-ā60s-style Telecaster single-coil pickup, and every pickup company will have something like this in their catalog. Because the bridge pickup is installed to an out-of-phase mini-toggle switch, your pickup will need three conductors, with the metal base plate separated from the pickupās common ground, and a third wire that connects the bridge plate individually to ground. If you have a regular two-conductor model, you need to break this connection, soldering a third wire directly to the base plate.
Interestingly, the bridge pickup on Summersā Tele is installed directly into the wood of the pickupās cavity. I see no reason why you shouldnāt install it the regular way on your guitar.
Hereās a close-up of the bridge on Summersā historic Tele.
Photo courtesy of Ten-Guitars (https://ten-guitars.de)
In the neck position, there is a ā59 PAF humbucker with a conventional two-conductor wiring installed directly into the pickguard in the standard way, with the open pole pieces facing towards the neck. The choice of late-ā50s PAF copies has never been better than it is today. You can buy excellent versions from a lot of companies, just make sure to choose the correct string spacing, which is usually called āF-spacingā or something similar, and is usually 2.070" (52.6 mm). (Gibson spacing, or G-spacing, is 1.930" or 49 mm.)
Youāll need humbucker routing on your body to make it fit. If you donāt have a body with humbucker routing and donāt want to get your Tele body re-routed, you can consider one of the numerous stacked humbuckers that will fit into a standard Telecaster neck pickup cavity. My experience is that there is a noticeable difference in tone compared to a full-sized humbucker, and it will be a compromise.
Next is the active booster. Finding a good booster module and wiring it up is much easier than fitting it into the tight space of a Telecaster body. There are a wide range of available booster options. There are complete DIY sets available that include the PCB and all of the necessary parts to build your own, and there are also drop-in PCBs that are already populated, like the well-known Fender mid-boost circuit kit. You can also find mini-sized booster modules using high-quality SMD parts, which only require a fraction of space compared to the regular PCBs.
āFinding a good booster module and wiring it up is much easier than fitting it into the tight space of a Telecaster body.ā
The available options include treble boosters, mid-boost circuits, full-range boosters, etc. Choose what you like best. The problem will be that you need to stuff it into a Telecaster body. As you know, there is not much space inside a Telecaster, and you need to add the booster itself, the 9V battery, an additional pot for controlling the booster, and two additional mini-toggle switchesāone for turning the booster on and off, and the other to get the bridge pickup out of phase. This is a lot of stuff! On Summersā guitar, this problem was solved by adding a large cavity on the back and closing it with a plastic back plate, as on a Gibson Les Paul.
A look inside the cavity for the mid-boost unit.
Photo courtesy of TeleManDon from Vancouver Island, BC (https://tdpri.com)
You can clearly see the two big routings for the boosterās PCB and the 9V battery, plus the additional pot to control the amount of boost as well as the mini-toggle switch to turn the booster on and off. If you are not afraid of routing two big chambers into your Telecasterās body, this is a suitable way to go.
On a Telecaster, there are not many alternatives I can think of to fit all these parts. One possible way of saving space would be to use a stacked pot with two 250k pots for volume and tone, so you have the second hole in the control plate available for the gain control pot of the booster. Between the two pots, it should be no problem to place the two mini-toggle switches. Or you use a push-pull pot for the gain control to save one of the mini-toggle switches. The guitar will look much cleaner, at least from the front side. But you still have to put the booster PCB and the battery somewhere. A customer of mine did this by completely routing the area under the pickguard. But even with only a regular single-coil neck pickup, it was a really tight fit, so with a regular-sized humbucker, it will be close to impossible. So, you or your luthier will have to be creative, and I wouldnāt be surprised if a company offers Andy Summers Telecaster bodies with all chambers already routed.
Here we go for the wiring. Wherever possible, I tried to keep the diagram as clean as possible. The wiring of the booster is only an example and depends on the booster you want to use, but the basic wiring is always the same.
Hereās a helpful schmatic of the Andy Summersā Telecaster wiring.
Illustration courtesy of SINGLECOIL (www.singlecoil.com)
Thatās it. Next month, we will take a deep look into guitar cables and wires, what really makes a difference, and how you can use this to reshape your guitar tone. So stay tuned!
Until then ... keep on modding!
PGāsJohn Bohlinger caught up with Moak at his Nashville studio known affectionately as the Smoakstack.
Grammy-nominated session guitarist, producer, mixer, and engineer Paul Moak stays busy on multiple fronts. Over the years heās written, played, produced and more for TV sessions (Pretty Little Liars, One Tree Hill) and artists including Third Day, Leeland, and the Blind Boys of Alabama. But most recently heās worked with Heart and Ann Wilson and Tripsitter.
Time Traveler
Moak is most loyal to a 1963 Stratocaster body thatās mated to a 1980s-vintage, 3-bolt, maple, bullet-truss-rod, 1969-style Fender Japan neck. The bridge has been swapped as many as four times and the bridge and neck pickups are Lindy Fralins.
Cool Cat
If thereās one guitar Moak would grab in a fire, itās the Jaguar heās had since age 20 and used in his band DC Talk. When Moak bought the guitar at Music Go Round in Minneapolis, the olympic white finish was almost perfect. He remains impressed with the breadth of tones. He likes the low-output single-coils for use with more expansive reverb effects.
Mystery Message Les Paul
Moakās 1970 L.P. Custom has a number of 1969 parts. It was traded to Moak by the band Feel. Interestingly, the back is carved with the words ācheatā and āliar,ā telling a tale we can only speculate about.
Dad Rocker
Almost equally near and dear to Moakās heart is this 1968 Vox Folk Twelve that belonged to his father. It has the original magnetic pickup at the neck as well as a piezo installed by Moak.
Flexi Plexis
This rare and precious trio of plexis can be routed in mix-and-match fashion to any of Moakās extensive selection of cabsāall of which are miked and ready to roll.
Vintage Voices
Moakās amps skew British, but ā60s Fender tone is here in plentitude courtesy of a blonde-and-oxblood Bassman and 1965 Bandmaster as well as a 2x6L6 Slivertone 1484 Twin Twelve.
Guess What?
The H-Zog, which is the second version of Canadian amp builder Garnetās Herzog tube-driven overdrive, can work as an overdrive or an amp head, but itās probably most famous for Randy Bachmanās fuzzy-as-heck āAmerican Womanā tone.
Stomp Staff
While the Eventide H90 that helps anchor Moakās pedalboard can handle the job of many pedals, he may have more amp heads on hand than stompboxes. But essentials include a JHS Pulp āNā Peel compressor/preamp, a DigiTech Whammy II, DigiTech FreqOut natural feedback generator, a Pete Cornish SS-3 drive, Klon Centaur, and Electro-Harmonix Deluxe Memory Man.
PG Contributor Tom Butwin dives into three standout baritone guitars, each with its own approach to low-end power and playability. From PRS, Reverend, and Airline, these guitars offer different scale lengths, pickup configurations, and unique tonal options. Which one fits your style best? Watch and find out!