
Yes, it is possible to age your instrument. But there are pitfalls to avoid and techniques to master.
Hello intrepid modders! As a result of countless requests, this month I'll launch a new series that explores the art of DIY relic'ing. We'll cover the whole story, including how to age wood, finish, metal, and plastic, and we'll also discuss what gives vintage instruments their special look and feel, and how to mimic these attributes. Put away the blowtorch and ball-peen hammer—there's a lot more to this than you might think.
To illustrate these techniques, I'll take a brand-new guitar and age it from headstock to endpin, while documenting each step of the process. I'll introduce our case-study 6-string—an affordable Junior-style double cut—in the next installment of this series. And while we're aging it, I'll offer tips for upgrading parts. As a bonus, I'll occasionally include advice, insights, and trade secrets from relic'ing pros I've recruited specifically for this project.
Okay, for starters, let's get some perspective on the whole relic phenomenon—one of the hottest topics ever in the guitar-modding community. It's almost a new religion: The number of players using "aged" guitars continues to increase, and players starting their own relic'ing jobs on the kitchen table is also on the rise. You can find a slew of videos online addressing this, along with wild stories about how to use coffee, tea, shoe polish, and other mysterious stuff to make a guitar look old. And, of course, the web is full of DIY relic photos.
What's so appealing about aging a guitar? Over the years, my customers have shared many different reasons for wanting me to relic their instruments. Some wish to own and play a faithful replica of a famous vintage guitar (think SRV's No. 1, Clapton's Blackie, or Rory Gallagher's '61 Strat). Some time ago, while picking up his new Strat in my shop that we'd relic'd to his wishes, a customer explained it this way: "I really like the look and feel of a vintage guitar that has been played for decades and every single ding tells a story. But I can't afford one, and now that I'm in my mid '50s, there simply isn't enough time left to play a new guitar for another 50 years and give it a history. So I'll go this route now."
The goal of a relic job has always been to make the object appear more vintage by mimicking age. The vintage craze isn't limited to guitars: Watches, cars, clothes, furniture, jewelry, hi-fi equipment, wine ... the list is endless and whole industries have sprung up around it. As guitarists, we have many reasons to consider doing a relic job on an instrument. Perhaps you want to individualize your guitar—make it a one-of-a-kind piece with you as the designer. Or maybe you yearn for an era when music was still handmade and not computer-generated or auto-tuned.
The goal of a relic job has always been to make the object appear more vintage by mimicking age.
Naturally, there are different degrees of aging, ranging from "barely noticeable" to "totally messed up" and everything between. I really like the definitions that the Fender Custom Shop uses for its Original-Era Finishes and Time Machine series—their builders have put a lot of thought into this. Here are Fender's terms (you'll find detailed descriptions of each one on the Fender Custom Shop website):
- N.O.S. (New Old Stock) - As if you bought it new in 1954.
- Closet Classic - Kept in a case most of its life—perhaps even forgotten.
- DLX Closet Classic - Owned with pride.
- Journeyman Relic® - Used but not abused.
- Relic® - There and back—and still here today.
- Heavy Relic® - Hard-fought wear and tear.
As we explore the aging techniques, I'll refer to these terms, focusing on what Fender calls Journeyman Relic and Relic—their most popular grades. Beyond Fender's Heavy Relic grade comes the "Gone Too Far" category, and, sadly, you'll see this a lot. Over the years I have encountered a lot of ugly relic jobs, consisting of completely destroyed finishes, rusty hardware that ceases working because of its condition, and unnatural wear in spots you'd never see on heavily played instruments.
Most people who overdo it somehow become possessed, once they start to relic a guitar. Or as PG's John Bohlinger said in his November 2013 Last Call column on relic'd guitars: "Those who relic also give themselves away because they go too far. They're not satisfied with a normal 50 years' worth of wear. They want their guitars to look like Keith Richards himself personally played 50 years' worth of gigs on it."
Photo 2
Photo by Andy Ellis
Over the years, customers have sent me many images of such projects, and I archive them so I know what not to do. Photo 1 shows a sampling of the Gone Too Far relic category. In contrast, look at Photo 2, which is a well-loved 1942 Gibson ES-150. This guitar is 78 years old—a veritable grandpa of electric 6-strings. It shows finish checking and the kind of hardware tarnishing, scrapes, and scratches that come from being played for almost eight decades, but somehow they ring true. (A side note: This guitar's owner explains that the big gouge across the bass f-hole occurred when someone was apprehended stealing the guitar out of its case from the backseat of the owner's car. The case latch tore into the wood as the would-be-thief bolted, leaving the instrument. That still qualifies as genuine aging, wouldn't you agree?)
Many guitarists have never seen, touched, or played a real vintage guitar, so they have no sense for honest wear-and-tear that comes with the territory, and this can't be substituted with pics from the internet—especially in terms of an instrument's feel. This includes rounded fretboard edges and fretboard wear—a subject we'll return to during this DIY relic series.
If you decide you want to relic your own instruments, here's some advice:
Do your research: Get as many vintage guitars as possible in your hands and pay close attention to them. Go to vintage guitar stores and trade shows—nobody will be annoyed if you tell them you want to admire the instruments. Check local ads to see if someone near you is selling a vintage guitar. Often the seller will invite you to examine it. Politely ask if you can take some photos, measurements, and notes. Over time, you'll get a better sense of what it's all about and start detecting similarities in vintage instrument wear.
Dress rehearsal: Get an inexpensive new guitar and train your skills on it before you start to work on your cherished instruments. This is a good investment. If something fails ... who cares?
Go easy: Over the years, I've developed three golden rules. In honor of my personal hero, Star Trek's Captain Jean-Luc Picard, let's call this the Relic Prime Directive:
- Break the shine.
- No rust.
- Don't overdo it.
If you remember these three simple rules when doing any relic job, you'll be rewarded with a successful, aesthetically pleasing result.
That's it for now. Next month, we'll perform our next guitar mod, and then return to our DIY relic series, so stay tuned. Until then ... keep on modding!
[Updated 9/15/21]
- Last Call: Someday You'll Regret That Relic Job - Premier Guitar ›
- DIY: Relic'ing Metal Hardware - Premier Guitar ›
- DIY Relic’ing: Break the Shine - Premier Guitar ›
- Reader Guitar of the Month: Zoller Partscaster - Premier Guitar ›
- Reader Guitar of the Month: T-Style Chickadee - Premier Guitar ›
- DIY Relic’ing: Hardware Continued - Premier Guitar ›
- DIY Guitar Relic'ing: Let's Crack Some Lacquer Finish - Premier Guitar ›
- Reader Guitar of the Month—Pickups and Finishes - Premier Guitar ›
- DIY 101: How to Build a Delay Pedal Kit - Premier Guitar ›
- An Easy Guide to Four Minor Guitar Repairs - Premier Guitar ›
AI, which generated this image in seconds, can obviously do amazing things. But can it actually replace human creativity?
Technology has always disrupted the music biz, but we’ve never seen anything like this.
AI has me deeply thinking: Is guitar (or any instrument) still valid? Are musicians still valid? I don’t think the answer is as obvious as I’d like it to be.
As a professional musician, I’ve spent the vast majority of my days immersed in the tones of tube amps, the resistance of steel strings under my fingers, and the endless pursuit of musical expression. Each day, I strive to tap into the Source, channel something new into the world (however small), and share it. Yet, lately, a new presence has entered the room—artificial intelligence. It is an interloper unlike any I’ve ever encountered. If you’re thinking that AI is something off in the “not-too-distant future,” you’re exponentially wrong. So, this month I’m going to ask that we sit and meditate on this technology, and hopefully gain some insight into how we are just beginning to use it.
AI: Friend or Foe?
In the last 12 months, I’ve heard quite a bit of AI-generated music. Algorithms can now “compose,” “perform” (with vocals of your choosing), and “produce” entire songs in minutes, with prompts as flippant as, “Write a song about__in the style of__.” AI never misses a note and can mimic the finer details of almost any genre with unnerving precision. For those who are merely curious about music, or those easily distracted by novelty, this might seem exciting … a shortcut to creating “professional” sounding music without years of practice. But for those of us who are deeply passionate about music, it raises some profound existential questions.
When you play an instrument, you engage in something deeply human. Each musician carries their life experiences into their playing. The pain of heartbreak, the joy of new beginnings, or the struggle to find a voice in an increasingly noisy and artificial online world dominated by algorithms. Sweat, tears, and callouses develop from your efforts and repetition. Your mistakes can lead to new creative vistas and shape the evolution of your style.
Emotions shape the music we create. While an algorithm can only infer and assign a “value” to the vast variety of our experience, it is ruthlessly proficient at analyzing and recording the entire corpus of human existence, and further, cataloging every known human behavioral action and response in mere fractions of a second.
Pardon the Disruption
Technology has always disrupted the music industry. The invention of musical notation provided unprecedented access to compositions. The advent of records allowed performances of music to be captured and shared. When radio brought music into every home, there was fear that no one would buy records. Television added visual spectacle, sparking fears that it would kill live performance. MIDI revolutionized music production but raised concerns about replacing human players. The internet, paired with the MP3 format, democratized music distribution, shattered traditional revenue models, and shifted power from labels to artists. Each of these innovations was met with resistance and uncertainty, but ultimately, they expanded the ways music could be created, shared, and experienced.
Every revolution in art and technology forces us to rediscover what is uniquely human about creativity. To me, though, this is different. AI isn’t a tool that requires a significant amount of human input in order to work. It’s already analyzed the minutia of all of humanity’s greatest creations—from the most esoteric to the ubiquitous, and it is wholly capable of creating entire works of art that are as commercially competitive as anything you’ve ever heard. This will force us to recalibrate our definition of art and push us to dig deeper into our personal truths.
“In an age where performed perfection is casually synthesized into existence, does our human expression still hold value? Especially if the average listener can’t tell the difference?”
Advantage: Humans
What if we don’t want to, though? In an age where performed perfection is casually synthesized into existence, does our human expression still hold value? Especially if the average listener can’t tell the difference?
Of course, the answer is still emphatically “Yes!” But caveat emptor. I believe that the value of the tool depends entirely on the way in which it is used—and this one in particular is a very, very powerful tool. We all need to read the manual and handle with care.
AI cannot replicate the experience of creating music in the moment. It cannot capture the energy of a living room jam session with friends or the adrenaline of playing a less-than-perfect set in front of a crowd who cheers because they feel your passion. It cannot replace the personal journey you take each time you push through frustration to master a riff that once seemed impossible. So, my fellow musicians, I say this: Your music is valid. Your guitar is valid. What you create with your hands and heart will always stand apart from what an algorithm can generate.
Our audience, on the other hand, is quite a different matter. And that’s the subject for next month’s Dojo. Until then, namaste.
Joni Mitchell’s rich, colorful altered-tuning chord voicings have set her work apart in its own musical universe, where the rest of us guitarists either scratch our heads in wonder or have to do dissertation-level research to unpack just how she gets her sound.
Joni Mitchell’s rich, colorful altered-tuning chord voicings have set her work apart in its own musical universe, where the rest of us guitarists either scratch our heads in wonder or have to do dissertation-level research to unpack just how she gets her sound. Dawes guitarist and songwriter Taylor Goldsmith gained firsthand experience with Mitchell’s songs when he joined her on stage—just check out 2022’s “Joni Jam” from the Newport Folk Festival, which also included Brandi Carlile, Blake Mills, Jon Batiste, and others.
Goldsmith joins us on this episode of the 100 Guitarists podcast. Together, we talk about Mitchell’s chord voicings and progressions, her tunings, what it’s like to share a stage with her, and Goldsmith wonders: Was Bob Dylan’s “Tangled Up in Blue” a nod to the songwriter’s 1971 album?
When we wrap up our conversation, we cover a new release of energetic, forward-leaning guitar cumbia by Los Pirañas and an album of Bach Partitas for Telecaster by guitarist Noel Johnston.
This episode is sponsored by L.R. Baggs.
Some names you’ve heard, others maybe not. But they all have a unique voice on the instrument.
Intermediate
Intermediate
• Open your ears to new influences.
• Understand how to create interlocking rhythm parts.
• Develop a new appreciate for the rhythmic complexity of Wayne Krantz, the effortless bebop of Biréli Lagrène, and the driving force that is David Williams.
The guitar has been a major factor in so many styles of music over the last 70 years, and any experienced musician can tell you that playing any one of those styles with authenticity takes countless hours of dedication. As we learn the instrument, we seek out music that we find inspiring to help guide us toward our voice. The legends we all know in the guitar pantheon have inspired millions of players. In my musical journey over the years, I’ve always been thrilled to discover unique musicians who never attained the same recognition as their more famous counterparts. With so much music at our disposal these days, I thought this group of guitarists deserved a little more spotlight. The inspiration and knowledge they have provided me were paramount in my development, and I wouldn’t be the player I am without them.
Biréli Lagrène’s Bombastic Bop
Standards was the first jazz guitar record I really listened to, and his playing on this entire album is devastating. There is so much groove, joy, and ferocity in every note. The way he lays ideas out on the fretboard made a lot of sense to me, his rhythms were intentional and clear, and it was surprisingly easy to dig into as a rock guitarist at the time. He has an extensive catalog of jazz, gypsy jazz, and fusion records with some of the best in the world, and he’s also a killer bass player who can sing just like Frank Sinatra! Ex. 1 is over the first eight measures of “Stella by Starlight.” I stole so much vocabulary from this solo that I can still play bits from memory 20 years later. Lagrène’s treatment of two-measure chunks to play his ideas was significantly helpful. Whether it was an engaging rhythmic phrase, constant eighth-notes, or just cramming in as much as he could, I stopped worrying so much about catching every chord change after I learned this one.
Ex. 1
Stella by Starlight
Old-School Swing!
George Barnes is a unique jazz guitarist who was a contemporary of Charlie Christian, Johnny Smith, and Django. A significant part of his early work was writing and arranging for radio and television, for NBC, and he also wrote the very first electric guitar method book in 1942. A friend in Austin gave me two CDs of his: a collection of his playing from the Plantation Party radio show and an overview of his octet recordings. The octet recordings sound like unhinged cartoon music with guitar and orchestral instruments and are highly enjoyable. Ex. 2 is a line I lifted from a recording of him playing “Ain’t Misbehavin.” It was one of the hippest endings I have ever heard on a jazz tune, and although I can’t find the recording anywhere, I still use it all the time. I love the intention in George Barnes’ playing. Swinging and mischievous, he always sounds like he was having fun.
Ex. 2
The George Barnes Sextet - Lover, Come Back to Me
“Thrilling” Rhythm Solos
David Williams is one of the greatest rhythm players of all time. He is responsible for most of the memorable guitar moments on Michael Jackson’s records, and all his parts have an infectious nature. He is the primary reason I got interested in rhythm guitar, and he is still an inspiration on that front. One of my favorite examples of his playing is the breakdown in Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” (where Vincent Price does the rap). His signature thunderous right-hand approach to single-note rhythm parts is in full effect, and the natural accents between the two rhythm parts are infectious on their own but weave perfectly together. Ex. 3 is my interpretation of two interlocking parts in this style. He’s said in interviews that his concept as a player was to develop “rhythm solos” that could stand out front in a song, and this is a perfect example of that.
Ex. 3
Thriller
(Better than) Average Riffs
Though Hamish Stuart is most known for being an original member of the Average White Band, the singer/guitarist/composer/producer also did extensive work with heavyweights such as George Benson, Paul McCartney, Chaka Khan, and Aretha Franklin. Though AWB was still working until 1983, Hamish was doing sessions with various artists as a sideman in the early ’80s, including this excerpt from “Move Me No Mountain” off Chaka Khan’s Naughty from 1980 (Ex. 4). I’ve always loved the interplay between these two parts, range-wise and rhythmically. The lower pick line hits some unusual 16th-note placements, and the higher dyads have a churn to them that is amazing. Both parts together feel different rhythmically from anything I have ever heard but sound so cool and unique.
Ex. 4
Chaka Khan - Move Me No Mountain
Wayne Krantz
Wayne Krantz is one of those guys that hit me like a lightning bolt. Upon hearing him, I felt like I had “permission” to play more with the fingers of my right hand, use jagged and intentional rhythms, and above all, to play more naturally. Wayne has always played like himself. His control over rhythm and articulation alone is legendary, not to mention the vast body of unique work he has created. Ex. 5 is an excerpt from the only solo I ever learned of his, from “Infinity Split” off 1999’s Greenwich Mean. I love this solo because it is incredibly engaging rhythmically and melodically, but almost 100 percent inside the harmony. This solo taught me more about rhythmic placement and articulation than anything.
Ex. 5
Wayne Krantz - Infinity Split
Though I could only grab a certain percentage of these guys’ “vocabulary,” learning these parts over the years helped me find my sound. The result was an attempt to emulate some of their musicality in my way, rather than outright imitating them. Anything you hear that grabs your interest is probably worth sitting down and figuring out. While we might not mention the guitarists above alongside Hendrix or Van Halen, they have all done their part to put a brick in the cathedral, furthering music, and the instrument.
After surviving a near-death aortic dissection onstage, Richie Faulkner shredder has endured some health challenges. In this exclusive video, he opens up about how the cardiac event impacted his mental health both on- and offstage.
During Judas Priest's the Louder Than Life 2021 performance at the Louisville-based festival, lead shredder Richie Faulkner suffered an aortic dissection onstage. (It's worth noting, the steadfast professional finished the "Painkiller" solo before ending the set—an amazing feat.) He was rushed to the nearby University of Louisville hospital that saved his life. (Serendipitously, the hospital was only a few miles from the festival grounds.)
Faulkner fully recovered from the near-death experience but has endured other health setback stemming from the aortic dissection resulting in several issues including his right-hand coordination and strength. He's powered through the last 3+ years of performances and only now is open to talking about the difficulties he has playing the technical rhythm parts and how that's impacted his mental health both on- and offstage with the massive metal band.