![Rig Rundown: Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit [2019]](https://www.premierguitar.com/media-library/rig-rundown-jason-isbell-the-400-unit-2019.jpg?id=27599353&width=1245&height=700&quality=85&coordinates=0%2C0%2C0%2C90)
While Jason Isbell has a treasure trove of calendar-worthy guitars, we have to start with this 1959 Gibson Les Paul. The showstopper earned its nickname “Redeye” for the original red-mark finish near the pickup selector being preserved by the guitar’s price tag hanging down in a music store’s front window protecting it from the UV rays. The ’burst was owned and played for many years by Lynyrd Skynyrd guitarist/bassist (and creator of the “Sweet Home Alabama” riff) Ed King. After King’s passing in August 2018, his family put a few of his classic guitars, including this iconic instrument, up for sale at Carter Vintage in Nashville.
At the request of the Carters’, Isbell was asked to come into the store to demo the guitars to help generate interest in the sale of Ed King’s collection. As Isbell retells the fateful meeting between he and Redeye, he felt “tricked” because they had left Jason alone with the ’burst, so of course he had to play. And after playing it … he had to have it.
He left Carter Vintage daydreaming about the Les Paul. He lost sleep that night fixated on how it sounded and played. So, the next day he called his accountant and she said you can’t have that guitar. Next, he called his management team, and he jokingly told them he would play any weird birthday parties as long as they weren’t for terrorists or bad people just so he could afford the guitar.
Isbell swapped out the tuners (although still functioning great) and upgraded with a period-correct set to preserve the sanctity of the instrument by saving the originals from harm. The tailpiece has been subbed out for a new Joe Glaser model that allows Isbell to top wrap the strings without worry of dinging the top. And the last notable change is that King had a partial refret up to the 12th position.
Under the metal covers rest a double-white humbucker (bridge) and zebra (neck). Isbell believes the zebra is overwound about 600 turns, but over the last 60 years, it’s lost some of its magnetism making it more balanced and creating an impeccable middle-position tone.
All of Jason’s guitars take Ernie Ball Slinkys gauged .010–.046, he hammers away with Dunlop Tortex 1.14 mm picks, and gets slippery with MagSlide Magnesium Guitar Slides.
“There’s more difference in the price than there is in the tone,” says Jason Isbell, when referring to this “Redeye” copy recently built by the Gibson Custom Shop.
“For about a week, this was my coolest Les Paul,” says Jason Isbell about his 1953 Gibson goldtop. The aforementioned Ed King-owned ’burst would overshadow any guitar in most collections, but this gem actually had the Bigsby and tailpiece put on by longtime Neil Young tech Larry Cragg. He bought the guitar around last Christmas from TR Crandall Guitars.
Since our last Rundown, Isbell has been lucky enough to receive a signature Martin D-18. The goal for this collaboration was to make the loudest-possible dreadnought. The model boasts a pre-aged Vintage Tone System (VTS) Adirondack spruce top, mahogany back and sides, and rear-shifted scalloped bracing which produce more natural volume and a clear powerful tone. It uses hide glue for a stronger resonance and it comes with the pickguard in the case because Martin’s Fred Greene discovered that it could decrease the guitar’s volume by 5 dB. His flattops take Martin SP Medium (.013–056) strings.
If you see the Castle Creek Guitars Dobrato come out, get your handkerchief out because it’s time for “If We Were Vampires.” The Colorado-based company claims the Dobrato to be the world’s first acoustic-electric, round-neck resophonic guitar to include the unique B-bender vibrato. With their proprietary vibrato arm, you can pull it sideways to move the B string to a C#. It has high-quality cones, biscuit, and a Fishman PRO-RES-BIS pickup system.
If you watched our Rundown with Nashville producer Dave Cobb (Isbell, Chris Stapleton, Sturgill Simpson), you may recognize this 1959 Gretsch Jet Firebird. In that episode, Cobb says that Isbell bonded so much with this Jet during the recording of Southeastern and Something More Than Free that he was the rightful owner of it because of how he made it sound. Then Cobb jokes that he told Isbell he would give him the guitar if he sold “x” amount of records. And now while Jason doesn’t confirm or deny if that number was hit, this is the same ’59 Jet that once belonged to Cobb.
Here’s Jason Isbell’s sunburst 1960 Fender Strat. That night at the show he used it quite a bit including during the old 400 Unit tune “Overseas.”
This candy-apple red Tele came out of the Fender factory in April 1965. To Jason’s knowledge, because it’s a transition instrument, the only thing that isn’t a true ’64 on the guitar is the pearloid inlays as opposed to clay.
Isbell tweaked this 2014 Fender Custom Shop ’60 Tele Custom (which was built by Master Builder Paul Waller) by adding a black pickguard and a Twisted Tele pickup in the neck position. This and the next two slides (the 1961 ES-335 and the Tom Stadler-built “Cooder-caster”) are the only guitars leftover from the 2015 episode.
This 1961 Gibson ES-335 is the first really old and really awesome guitar that Isbell obtained and is mostly original with a few key upgrades. Isbell had famed Nashville luthier Joe Glaser give the guitar a refret and install a TonePros tailpiece along with new tuners because after years of use the originals started to look like “a dead man’s toe.”
“This guitar will actually get me gigs,” says Isbell. It’s a “Cooder-caster” that was built by Nashville luthier Tom Stadler from Carter Vintage Guitars. The idea behind the guitar came from legendary slide guru Ry Cooder’s main guitar. Stadler salvaged the “gold foil” neck pickup from an old Teisco guitar and held onto to for about a year before Isbell’s wife commissioned the guitar for his birthday. Stadler also installed a Lollar lap steel pickup that’s based on an old Supro model in the bridge position. Based on a recommendation from Blake Mills, Isbell strings this guitar up with flatwound strings.
In the last Rundown, Jason was running two amps (Magnatone Super Fifty-Nine and Sommatone Roaring 40), and now his setup has doubled to include four combos. The first one is this Magnatone Panoramic Stereo 2x10 with pitch-shifting vibrato. It’s loaded with the company’s ceramic speakers.
Next up in his stable of amps is the Fender '64 Custom Deluxe Reverb handwired reissue. He took out the Jensen C12Q speaker and replaced it with a Weber Ferromax.
To keep power consistent and volume manageable (without sacrificing tone), Isbell employs a Weber MiniMass 50-watt Attenuator for each amp. The Magnatone gets two because it has two power amps for the stereo output.
The top pair that work together starts with this ’64 Fender Vibroverb that has been given the “Diaz” mod (named SRV’s tech Cesar Diaz), which means they pulled the preamp tube in the vibrato channel. (For what it’s worth, this mod can be done to the normal channel, too. You just need to pull the V1 preamp instead.) The impact of the mod is summarized best by new PG columnist Jens Mosbergvik (“Silver and Black”) on his Fenderguru site: “the other channel’s tube will be hotter biased and offers more gain. The amp will play louder than before given the same volume knob setting. The stronger signal will push the second gain stage (V4 tube) harder and give you increased sustain, compression and harmonics.” It has a 15" JBL speaker and was a Christmas gift from wife Amanda Shires.
The last of the combos is this 1958 Fender Bassman that Isbell bought at Rudy’s in NYC. He believes it was owned or was in the shop of George Alessandro for years, so it’s in tip-top shape and purrs real nice.
The top shelf of Jason’s rack includes a trio of Fishman Aura units and a J. Rockett Audio Blue Note OD that is used as an EQ pedal for Jason’s neck humbuckers so they are a little more trebly. These are all juiced up by the Voodoo Lab Pedal Power Digital brick.
Next row is home to a silverface Klon Centuar, Origin Effects SlideRIG, and a trio of Analog Man stomps—a King of Tone, Sun Lion (gift from Marc Ford), and a modded Analog Man Small CompROSSor (with an added mix knob). These are brought to life by the Voodoo Lab Pedal Power Iso-5.
And in the last drawer we have an Analog Man ARDX20 Dual Analog Delay, Electro-Harmonix Micro POG, and a quad of Chase Bliss digital powerhouses—Condor, Gravitas, Tonal Recall, and Dark World. All of these pedals are powered by the Voodoo Lab Pedal Power 4x4.
Lastly for Isbell is this Ibanez DML10 Modulation Delay II. The delay function is dialed out and is used as a comb filter with very subtle modulation that mimics a flanger.
Here is the brain behind Isbell’s entire setup that enables him to make several changes with one kick of a button thanks to the RJM Mastermind GT. Other goodies out front include a TC Electronic PolyTune 2 Noir, Chase Bliss Condor, and a Mission Engineering EP-1 Expression Pedal.
A new addition to Sadler Vaden’s vault is this buttescotch, blackguard Tele built by the Fender Custom Shop last year. It’s based on a ’51 Nocaster with a ’60s-style neck profile and Twisted Tele pickups (suggested by Jason).
This is a 1981 Tokai Breezysound T-style outfitted with a classic B-bender.
Here is Sadler Vaden’s 1999 Fender Tele Custom ’72 reissue (MIM) that was upgraded with a Lindy Fralin Split-blade in the bridge and a Fralin P-92 in the neck.
400 Unit guitarist Sadler Vaden has been using this ’05 Gibson SG Standard as his main ride. It's loaded with a Seymour Duncan Pearly Gates humbucker in the bridge, a '59 in the neck, and is strung with Ernie Ball Regular Slinky strings.
This eye-catching Les Paul VOS is a 2015 model from the Gibson Custom Shop that now has OX4 humbuckers that were custom-wound to approximate those found in Pagey’s No. 1.
This 2015 Fender Custom Shop Strat was Sadler’s newest guitar in the 2015 episode. It’s now used for electric material like “Last of My Kind” and always rolls with a Thalia capo in the 4th position.
On the last Rundown Sadler was using a 12-string Dano, but now he’s got a fireglo 360/12 Rickenbacker for the job.
If you’re following along at home, you’ll recognize this from the last Rundown when it was Isbell’s go-to acoustic. Now, this D-18 Authentic 1939 belongs to Sadler and still sees the stage each night.
Sadler’s only semi-hollow 6-string is this 2007 Gibson ES-335 “block” reissue—and at the behest of Isbell (its former owner), Vaden dropped in OX4 PAF-style pickups, a Duesenberg Tremolo system, and is strung with Ernie Ball Regular Slinky strings, too.
Here is Sadler’s newest guitar—a Gibson Acoustic SJ-200 Deluxe.
Like last time, Sadler is still running his 3rd Power British Dream.
And while he’s still using a Vox (last time was a handwired AC30 reissue), he’s now rocking through an all-tube 1965 Pacemaker he bought at Emerald City Guitars.
Sadler’s stomp station has grown and tidied up since our last visit. Now he’s going with an Eventide H9, Line 6 MM4, Strymon BlueSky, Analog Man ARDX20 Dual Analog Delay, Mad Professor Forest Green Compressor, Greer Amps Lightspeed, Analog Man King of Tone, Walrus Audio 385 drive, and a pair of Dunlop foot pedals—535Q Cry Baby and a Dunlop DVP3 Volume Pedal. A Korg Pitchblack tuner keeps everything in check, a 3rd Power A/B box controls the amps, and a Walrus Audio Transit 5 wrangles all the pedals.
And for acoustic purposes, Sadler is using a Fishman Platinum Pro EQ and a Radial ToneBone BigShot I/O.
An unlikely pairing of bassists would be the 400 Unit’s Jimbo Hart and former-Metallica thumper Jason Newsted. However, as odd as this low-end duo may seem, they’ve actually become fast friends after Newsted attended and introduced himself following an Isbell show in Oakland, California. The friendship has blossomed in such a way that Newsted gifted Hart this Sadowsky Will Lee Bass 4-string that is decked out with a flame-maple top and fretboard with abalone inlays, and a Hipshot D Extender that quickly goes down a whole step.
While this head-turning blue bomber is an onstage backup, Hart loves that this Sadowsky Vintage PJ “always works in the studio” so it still consistently feels the love.
Hart is running two Ashdown tube heads that can feel like a herd of oncoming buffalo. He normally prefers to run the 300-watt Classic Tube Magnifier (bottom) but will go for the 100-watt model (top) for a brighter sound.
The Hart and soul of his rig lies in this small box—a handwired Noble DI preamp listed as No. 19.
This Xotic X-Blender sits in the rack and allows Jimbo to intricately control the wet/dry blend in his setup from a night-to-night, room-to-room basis. (You can also see that he’s no longer using wooden picks and now plunks away with some custom plectrums from Dunlop.)
Jimbo’s pedal playground includes a Peterson Strobostomp Classic, a Dunlop DVP3 Volume, a Greer Amps Soma, a Malekko Spring, Walrus Audio Voyager and Janus, an Ampeg Classic Analog Bass Preamp, EBS OctaBass, and everything is controlled by a Walrus Audio Transit 5.
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D'Addario XT Strings:https://www.daddario.com/XTRR
Stevie Van Zandt with “Number One,” the ’80s reissue Stratocaster—with custom paisley pickguard from luthier Dave Petillo—that he’s been playing for the last quarter century or so.
There’s a life-size cameo of a go-go dancer in banana yellow; she’s frozen in mid hip shimmy. One wall displays rock posters and B-movie key art, anchored by a 3D rendering of Cream’s Disraeli Gearsalbum cover that swishes and undulates as you walk past it. Van Zandt’s shelves are stuffed with countless DVDs, from Louis Prima to the J. Geils Band performing on the German TV concert seriesRockpalast. There are three copies ofIggy and the Stooges: Live in Detroit. Videos of the great ’60s-music TV showcases, from Hullabaloo to Dean Martin’s The Hollywood Palace, sit here. Hundreds of books about rock ’n’ roll, from Greil Marcus’s entire output to Nicholas Schaffner’s seminal tome, The Beatles Forever, form a library in the next room.
But I haven’t seen this yet because the elevator is dead, and I am in it. Our trap is tiny, about 5' by 5'. A dolly filled with television production equipment is beside me. There’s a production assistant whom I’ve never met until this morning and another person who’s brand new to me, too, Geoff Sanoff. It turns out that he’s Van Zandt’s engineer—the guy who runs this studio. And as I’ll discover shortly, he’s also one of the several sentinels who watch over Stevie Van Zandt’s guitars.
There’s nothing to do now but wait for the NYFD, so Sanoff and I get acquainted. We discover we’re both from D.C. and know some of the same people in Washington’s music scene. We talk about gear. We talk about this television project. I’m here today assisting an old pal, director Erik Nelson, best known for producing Werner Herzog’s most popular documentaries, like Grizzly Man and Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Van Zandt has agreed to participate in a television pilot about the British Invasion. After about half an hour, the elevator doors suddenly slide open, and we’re rescued, standing face-to-face with three New York City firefighters.
As our camera team sets up the gear, Sanoff beckons me to a closet off the studio’s control room. I get the sense I am about to get a consolation prize for standing trapped in an elevator for the last 30 minutes. He pulls a guitar case off the shelf—it’s stenciled in paint with the words “Little Steven” on its top—snaps open the latches, and instantly I am face to face with Van Zandt’s well-worn 1957 Stratocaster. Sanoff hands it to me, and I’m suddenly holding what may as well be the thunderbolt of Zeus for an E Street Band fan. My jaw drops when he lets me plug it in so he can get some levels on his board, and the clean, snappy quack of the nearly 70-year-old pickups fills the studio. For decades, Springsteen nuts have enjoyed a legendary 1978 filmed performance of “Rosalita” from Phoenix, Arizona, that now lives on YouTube. This is the Stratocaster Van Zandt had slung over his shoulder that night. It’s the same guitar he wields in the famous No Nukes concert film shot at Madison Square Garden a year later, in 1979. My mind races. The British Invasion is all well and essential. But now I’m thinking about Van Zandt’s relationship with his guitars.
Stevie Van Zandt's Gear
Van Zandt’s guitar concierge Andy Babiuk helped him plunge deeper down the Rickenbacker rabbit hole. Currently, Van Zandt has six Rickenbackers backstage: two 6-strings and four 12-strings.
Guitars
- 1957 Fender Stratocaster (studio only)
- ’80s Fender ’57 Stratocaster reissue “Number One”
- Gretsch Tennessean
- 1955 Gibson Les Paul Custom “Black Beauty” (studio only)
- Rickenbacker Fab Gear 2024 Limited Edition ’60s Style 360 Model (candy apple green)
- Rickenbacker Fab Gear 2023 Limited Edition ’60s Style 360 Model (snowglo)
- Rickenbacker 2018 Limited Edition ’60s Style 360 Fab Gear (jetglo)
- Two Rickenbacker 1993Plus 12-strings (candy apple purple and SVZ blue)
- Rickenbacker 360/12C63 12-string (fireglo)
- Vox Teardrop (owned by Andy Babiuk)
Amps
- Two Vox AC30s
- Two Vox 2x12 cabinets
Effects
- Boss Space Echo
- Boss Tremolo
- Boss Rotary Ensemble
- Durham Electronics Sex Drive
- Durham Electronics Mucho Busto
- Durham Electronics Zia Drive
- Electro-Harmonix Satisfaction
- Ibanez Tube Screamer
- Voodoo Labs Ground Control Pro switcher
Strings and Picks
- D’Addario (.095–.44)
- D’Andrea Heavy
Van Zandt has reached a stage of reflection in his career. Besides the Grammy-nominated HBO film, Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple, which came out in 2024, he recently wrote and published his autobiography, Unrequited Infatuations (2021), a rollicking read in which he pulls no punches and makes clear he still strives to do meaningful things in music and life.
His laurels would weigh him down if they were actually wrapped around his neck. In the E Street Band, Van Zandt has participated in arguably the most incredible live group in rock ’n’ roll history. And don’t forget Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes or Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul. He created both the Underground Garage and Outlaw Country radio channels on Sirius/XM. He started a music curriculum program called TeachRock that provides no-cost resources and other programs to schools across the country. Then there’s the politics. Via his 1985 record, Sun City, Van Zandt is credited with blasting many of the load-bearing bricks that brought the walls of South African apartheid tumbling into dust. He also acted in arguably the greatest television drama in American history, with his turn as Silvio Dante in The Sopranos.
Puzzlingly, Van Zandt’s autobiography lacks any detail on his relationship with the electric guitar. And Sanoff warns me that Van Zandt is “not a gearhead.” Instead he has an organization in place to keep his guitar life spinning like plates on the end of pointed sticks. Besides Sanoff, there are three others: Ben Newberry has been Van Zandt’s guitar tech since the beginning of 1982. Andy Babiuk, owner of Rochester, New York, guitar shop Fab Gear and author of essential collector reference books Beatles Gear and Rolling Stones Gear (the latter co-authored by Greg Prevost) functions as Van Zandt’s guitar concierge. Lastly, luthier Dave Petillo, based in Asbury Park, New Jersey, oversees all the maintenance and customization on Van Zandt’s axes.
“I took one lesson, and they start to teach you the notes. I don’t care about the notes.” —Stevie Van Zandt
I crawl onto Zoom with Van Zandt for a marathon session and come away from our 90 minutes with the sense that he is a man of dichotomies. Sure, he’s a guitar slinger, but he considers his biggest strengths to be as an arranger, producer, and songwriter. “I don’t feel that being a guitar player is my identity,” he tells me. “For 40 years, ever since I made my first solo record, I just have not felt that I express myself as a guitar player. I still enjoy it when I do it; I’m not ambivalent. When I play a solo, I am in all the way, and I play a solo like I would like to hear if I were in the audience. But the guitar part is really part of the song’s arrangement. And a great solo is a composed solo. Great solos are ones you can sing, like Jimi Hendrix’s solo in ‘All Along the Watchtower.’”
In his autobiography, Van Zandt mentions that his first guitar was an acoustic belonging to his grandfather. “I took one lesson, and they start to teach you the notes. I don’t care about the notes,” Van Zandt tells me. “The teacher said I had natural ability. I’m thinking, if I got natural ability, then what the fuck do I need you for? So I never went back. After that, I got my first electric, an Epiphone. It was about slowing down the records to figure out with my ear what they were doing. It was seeing live bands and standing in front of that guitar player and watching what they were doing. It was praying when a band went on TV that the cameraman would occasionally go to the right place and show what the guitar player was doing instead of putting the camera on the lead singer all the time. And I’m sure it was the same for everybody. There was no concept of rock ’n’ roll lessons. School of Rock wouldn’t exist for another 30 years. So, you had to go to school yourself.”
By the end of the 1960s, Van Zandt tells me he had made a conscious decision about what kind of player he wanted to be. “I realized that I really wasn’t that interested in becoming a virtuoso guitar player, per se. I was more interested in making sure I could play the guitar solo that would complement the song. I got more into the songs than the nature of musicianship.”
After the Beatles and the Stones broke the British Invasion wide open, bands like Cream and the Yardbirds most influenced him. “George Harrison would have that perfect 22-second guitar solo,” Van Zandt remembers. “Keith Richards. Dave Davies. Then, the harder stuff started coming. Jeff Beck in the Yardbirds. Eric Clapton with things like ‘White Room.’ But the songs stayed in a pop configuration, three minutes each or so. You’d have this cool guitar-based song with a 15-second, really amazing Jeff Beck solo in it. That’s what I liked. Later, the jam bands came, but I was not into that. My attention deficit disorder was not working for the longer solos,” he jokes. Watch a YouTube video of any recent E Street Band performance where Van Zandt solos, and the punch and impact of his approach and attack are apparent. At Nationals Park in Washington, D.C., last year, his solo on “Rosalita” was 13 powerful seconds.
Van Zandt and Bruce Springsteen’s relationship goes back to their earliest days on the Jersey shore. “Everybody had a different guitar; your guitar was your identity,” recalls Van Zandt. “At some point, a couple of years later, I remember Bruce calling me and asking me for my permission to switch to Telecaster. At that point, I was ready to switch to Stratocaster.”
Photo by Pamela Springsteen
Van Zandt left his Epiphone behind for his first Fender. “I started to notice that the guitar superstars at the time were playing Telecasters. Mike Bloomfield. Jeff Beck. Even Eric Clapton played one for a while,” he tells me. “I went down to Jack’s Music Shop in Red Bank, New Jersey, because he had the first Telecaster in our area and couldn’t sell it; it was just sitting there. I bought it for 90 bucks.”
In those days, and around those parts, players only had one guitar. Van Zandt recalls, “Everybody had a different guitar; your guitar was your identity. At some point, a couple of years later, I remember Bruce calling me and asking me for my permission to switch to Telecaster. At that point, I was ready to switch to Stratocaster, because Jimi Hendrix had come in and Jeff Beck had switched to a Strat. They all kind of went from Telecaster to Les Pauls. And then some of them went on to the Stratocaster. For me, the Les Paul was just too out of reach. It was too expensive, and it was just too heavy. So I said, I’m going to switch to a Stratocaster. It felt a little bit more versatile.”
Van Zandt still employs Stratocasters, and besides the 1957 I strummed, he was seen with several throughout the ’80s and ’90s. But for the last 20 or 25 years, Van Zandt has mainly wielded a black Fender ’57 Strat reissue from the ’80s with a maple fretboard and a gray pearloid pickguard. He still uses that Strat—dubbed “Number One”—but the pickguard has been switched to one sporting a purple paisley pattern that was custom-made by Dave Petillo.
Petillo comes from New Jersey luthier royalty and followed in the footsteps of his late father, Phil Petillo. At a young age, the elder Petillo became an apprentice to legendary New York builder John D’Angelico. Later, he sold Bruce Springsteen the iconic Fender Esquire that’s seen on the Born to Run album cover and maintained and modified that guitar and all of Bruce’s other axes until he passed away in 2010. Phil worked out of a studio in the basement of their home, not far from Asbury Park. Artists dropped in, and Petillo has childhood memories of playing pick-up basketball games in his backyard with members of the E Street Band. (He also recalls showing his Lincoln Logs to Johnny Cash and once mistaking Jerry Garcia for Santa Claus.)
“I was more interested in making sure I could play the guitar solo that would complement the song. I got more into the songs than the nature of musicianship.” —Stevie Van Zandt
“I’ve known Stevie Van Zandt my whole life,” says Petillo. “My dad used to work on his 1957 Strat. That guitar today has updated tuners, a bone nut, new string trees, and a refret that was done by Dad long ago. I think one volume pot may have been changed. But it still has the original pickups.” Petillo is responsible for a lot of the aesthetic flair seen on Van Zandt’s instruments. He continues, “Stevie is so much fun to work with. I love incorporating colors into things, and Stevie gets that. When you talk to a traditional Telecaster or Strat player, and you say, ‘I want to do a tulip paisley pickguard in neon blue-green,’ they’re like, ‘Holy cow, that’s too much!’ But for Stevie, it’s just natural. So I always text him with pickguard designs, asking him, ‘Which one do you like?’ And he calls me a wild man; he says, ‘I don’t have that many Strats to put them on!’ But I’ll go to Ben Newberry and say, ‘Ben, I made these pickguards; let’s get them on the guitar. And I’ll go backstage, and we’ll put them on. I just love that relationship; Stevie is down for it.”
Petillo takes care of the electronics on Van Zandt’s guitars. Almost all of the Strats are modified with an internal Alembic Stratoblaster preamp circuit, which Van Zandt can physically toggle on and off using a switch housed just above the input jack. Van Zandt tells me, “That came because I got annoyed with the whole pedal thing. I’m a performer onstage, and I’m integrated with the audience and I like the freedom to move. And if I’m across the stage and all of a sudden Bruce nods to me to take a solo, or there’s a bit in the song that requires a little bit of distortion, it’s just easier to have that; sometimes, I’ll need that extra little boost for a part I’m throwing in, and it’s convenient.”
In recent times, Van Zandt has branched out from the Stratocaster, which has a lot to do with Andy Babiuk's influence. The two met 20 years ago, and Babiuk’s band, the Chesterfield Kings, is on Van Zandt’s Wicked Cool Records. “He’d call me up and ask me things like, ‘What’s Brian Jones using on this song?’” explains Babiuk. “When I’d ask him why, he’d tell me, ‘Because I want to have that guitar.’ It’s a common thing for me to get calls and texts from him like that. And there’s something many people overlook that Stevie doesn’t advertise: He’s a ripping guitar player. People think of him as playing chords and singing backup for Bruce, but the guy rips. And not just on guitar, on multiple instruments.”
Van Zandt tells me he wanted to bring more 12-string to the E Street Band this tour, “just to kind of differentiate the tone.” He explains, “Nils is doing his thing, and Bruce is doing his thing, and I wanted to do more 12-string.” He laughs, “I went full Paul Kantner!” Babiuk helped Van Zandt plunge deeper down the Rickenbacker rabbit hole. Currently, Van Zandt has six Rickenbackers backstage: two 6-strings and four 12-strings. Each 12-string has a modified nut made by Petillo from ancient woolly mammoth tusk, and the D, A, and low E strings are inverted with their octave.
Van Zandt explains this to me: “I find that the strings ring better when the high ones are on top. I’m not sure if that’s how Roger McGuinn did it, but it works for me. I’m also playing a wider neck.”
Babiuk tells me about a unique Rick in Van Zandt’s rack of axes: “I know the guys at Rickenbacker well, and they did a run of 30 basses in candy apple purple for my shop. I showed one to Stevie, and purple is his color; he loves it. He asked me to get him a 12-string in the same color, and I told him, ‘They don’t do one-offs; they don’t have a custom shop,’ but it’s hard to say no to the guy! So I called Rickenbacker and talked them into it. I explained, ‘He’ll play it a lot on this upcoming tour.’ They made him a beautiful one with his OM logo.”
The purple one-off is a 1993Plus model and sports a 1 3/4" wide neck—1/8" wider than a normal Rickenbacker. Van Zandt loved it so much that he had Babiuk wrestle with Rickenbacker again to build another one in baby blue. Petillo has since outfitted them with paisley-festooned custom pickguards. When guitar tech Newberry shows me these unique axes backstage, I can see the input jack on the purple guitar is labeled with serial number 01001.
“Some of my drive is based on gratitude,” says Van Zandt, “feeling like we are the luckiest guys in the luckiest generation ever.”
Photo by Rob DeMartin
Van Zandt also currently plays a white Vox Teardrop. That guitar is a prototype owned by Babiuk. “Stevie wanted a Teardrop,” Babiuk tells me, “but I explained that the vintage ones are hit and miss—the ones made in the U.K. were often better than the ones manufactured in Italy. Korg now owns Vox, and I have a new Teardrop prototype from them in my personal collection. When I showed it to him, he loved it and asked me to get him one. I had to tell him, ‘I can’t; it’s a prototype, there’s only one,’ and he asked me to sell him mine,” he chuckles. “I told him, ‘It’s my fucking personal guitar, it’s not for sale!’ So I ended up lending it to him for this tour, and I told him, ‘Remember, this is my guitar; don’t get too happy with it, okay?’
“He asked me why that particular guitar sounds and feels so good. Besides being a prototype built by only one guy, the single-coil pickups’ output is abnormally hot, and the neck feels like a nice ’60s Fender neck. Stevie’s obviously a dear friend of mine, and he can hold onto it for as long as he wants. I’m glad it’s getting played. It was just hanging in my office.”
Van Zandt tells me how Babiuk’s Vox Teardrop sums up everything he wants from his tone, and says, “It’s got a wonderfully clean, powerful sound. Like Brian Jones got on ‘The Last Time.’ That’s my whole thing; that’s the trick—trying to get the power without too much distortion. Bruce and Nils get plenty of distortion; I am trying to be the clean rhythm guitar all the time.”
If Van Zandt has a consigliere like Tony Soprano had Silvio Dante, that’s Newberry. Newberry has tech’d nearly every gig with Van Zandt since 1982. “Bruce shows move fast,” he tells me. “So when there’s a guitar change for Stevie, and there are many of them, I’m at the top of the stairs, and we switch quickly. There’s maybe one or two seconds, and if he needs to tell me something, I hear it. He’s Bruce’s musical director, so he may say something like, ‘Remind me tomorrow to go over the background vocals on “Ghosts,”’ or something like that. And I take notes during the show.”
“Everybody had a different guitar; your guitar was your identity. At some point, a couple of years later, I remember Bruce calling me and asking me for my permission to switch to a Telecaster.” —Stevie Van Zandt
When I ask Newberry how he defines Van Zandt’s relationship to the guitar, he doesn’t hesitate, snapping back, “It’s all in his head. His playing is encyclopedic, whether it’s Bruce or anything else. He may show up at soundcheck and start playing the Byrds, but it’s not ‘Tambourine Man,’ it’s something obscure like ‘Bells of Rhymney.’ People may not get it, but I’ve known him long enough to know what’s happening. He’s got everything already under his fingers. Everything.”
As such, Van Zandt says he never practices. “The only time I touch a guitar between tours is if I’m writing something or maybe arranging backing vocal harmonies on a production,” he tells me.
Before we say goodbye, I tell Van Zandt about my time stuck in his elevator, and his broad grin signals that I may not be the only one to have suffered that particular purgatory. When I ask him about the 1957 Stratocaster I got to play upon my release, he recalls: “Bruce Springsteen gave me that guitar. I’ve only ever had one guitar stolen in my life, and it was in the very early days of my joining the E Street Band. I only joined temporarily for what I thought would be about seven gigs, and in those two weeks or so, my Stratocaster was stolen. It was a 1957 or 1958. Bruce felt bad about that and replaced that lost guitar with this one. So I’ve had it a long, long time. Once that first one was stolen, I decided I would resist having a personal relationship with any one guitar. But that one being a gift from Bruce makes it special. I will never take it back on the road.”
After 50 years of rock ’n’ roll, if there is one word to sum up Stevie Van Zandt, it may be “restless”—an adjective you sense from reading his autobiography. He gets serious and tells me, “I’m always trying to catch up. The beginning of accomplishing something came quite late to me. I feel like I haven’t done nearly enough. What are we on this planet trying to do?” he asks rhetorically. “We’re trying to realize our potential and maybe leave this place one percent better for the next guy. And some of my drive is based on gratitude, feeling like we are the luckiest guys in the luckiest generation ever. That’s what I’m doing: I want to give something back. I feel an obligation.”
YouTube It
“Rosalita” is a perennial E Street Band showstopper. Here’s a close-up video from Philadelphia’s Citizens Bank Park last summer. Van Zandt’s brief but commanding guitar spotlight shines just past the 4:30 mark.
Mike Stern has been around the block. The jazz-guitar virtuoso earned his stripes through the ’70s and ’80s in New York’s jazz scene, playing 6-string with drummer Billy Cobham before tapping in with artists like Miles Davis and Jaco Pastorius—even at a time when guitar wasn’t necessarily a cornerstone piece of a jazz outfit. In this episode of Wong Notes, Stern fills Cory Wong in on the ups and downs of 50 years spent in one of the most complex and underappreciated music genres.
Stern made the leap to New York from Boston when Davis invited him to join his band (back when jazz was the pop music of the day, notes Stern), but it was a rocky ride—Stern says he and many other musicians were “bottoming out” from addiction, until a friend went sober and convinced them to give sobriety a try. Stern talks about Miles’ hidden love for the guitar, and how he succeeded in fitting into non-guitar environments.
Wong and Stern touch on the decline of arts spaces and cultures in America (thanks, Stern says, to misallocated funding), playing gigs where the band outnumbers the audience members, the benefits of running the same rig in every room, and how to pick the right pick—for Stern, that involves a bit of wig glue. Tune in to get the details, and be sure to check out our 2018 Rig Rundown with Stern, too.
