What does someone who works at Norman’s Rare Guitars bring on the road?
“It’s a loony bin.” That’s how Michael Lemmo describes Norman’s Rare Guitars, the coveted Los Angeles shop. Lemmo was tapped to join the store and eventually host their popular Guitar of the Day web series after Norm’s son Jordan spotted Lemmo jamming in the store and introduced him to his shop-owner dad. Norm kept in touch and eventually offered Lemmo a job, starting with his Lemmo Demo series of affordable guitars.
Lemmo toured through July with Allan Rayman. Ahead of their date at Nashville’s Basement East, PG’s Chris Kies caught up with the guitarist for some unofficial Lemmo demos.
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Lemmo got this Jazzmaster new in 2012, and its wear and tear is 100 percent organic—no relic job. Over time, Lemmo says, he “went to town” with it, starting with swapping out the factory bridge for a Mastery bridge, which holds it in perfect tune. He switched in the green anodized pickguard, and inspired by his guitar hero Eddie Van Halen’s red kill switch, he installed a red knob on the volume pot, then a blue one for the tone knob, to give it a Nintendo 64 vibe. Finally, a friend helped him pot a PAF humbucker in the bridge position. Lemmo runs D’Addario NYXL .011s on this dino.
Gift from the God
Tucked into the headstock is Lemmo’s prized pick, a gift from EVH himself. As random luck would have it, the famous guitarist began dating Lemmo’s friend’s mother during Lemmo’s first year of high school in Pennsylvania, and 14-year-old Michael had the opportunity to spend a couple hours talking guitars with Eddie one day. Van Halen gifted him this pick, which doesn’t stay in a glass case—Lemmo performs with it.
Low-End Evergreen
This backup Jazzmaster circa 2000 is set up to be a low-register, baritone-like guitar, with heavier-gauge strings and another PAF in the bridge. Lemmo leans on it to complement key changes and vocals in the lower register.
Base Camp
Lemmo likes a robust, clean base tone to build from on electric. At home, he usually plays through pre-1965 Fender amplifiers and trusts his pedals to give him all the tonal flexibility he desires. For this gig, he’s rocking a backline Fender Twin.
Simple Pleasures
Lemmo relies on his stomps for tone sculpting, but he doesn’t need much to get the job done. His signal hits a Korg tuner, followed by an Xotic EP Booster, Bearfoot FX Honey Bee OD, Red Panda Context, Boss DD-7, and TC Electronic Ditto. They’re all wired up to a trusty Truetone 1 Spot Pro CS7.
Shop Michael Lemmo's Rig
Fender Jazzmaster
D'Addario NYXL Strings
Fender Twin Reverb
Korg Tuner
Xotic EP Booster
Red Panda Context
TC Electronic Ditto
Truetone 1 SPOT Pro CS7
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This vintage Tele’s neck and frets show lots of road wear, but it’s straight and dry.
This was not something that could be seen at the point of purchase. But at some point, that company wasn’t drying the wood, because my experience with instruments built around 1964 is that they didn’t have this problem. I’ve never seen a vintage Fender built before 1964 where the frets were sticking out the side of the neck because they hadn’t dried the fretboard well enough, and it shrank.
For the most part, there’s an extraordinary amount of trust when you’re buying an instrument. For example, customers trust that the frets are installed in the correct positions without checking each fret position with a tuner. This trust is mostly deserved, as most frets are generally installed in the right places. What’s sometimes not installed in the correct place is the nut. This controls how open chords play in tune down in the first position. I’m going to make a list of the things I believe you cansee when you buy a guitar, and the things you can’t. My hope is that it helps you make your next purchase with confidence.
Tuning pegs are among the easy-to-inspect items when shopping for a guitar. The peg at far left has clearly seen better days.
In general, here’s a list of what you can see:
- Tuning pegs and how they operate
- If the nut was cut well in terms of string height over the frets
- The neck shape as regarding how it is comfortable in your hand
- How the truss rod adjusts
- How well the instrument was inlaid in the fretboard
- How the side dots look
- How professional the binding is
- If the neck angle is generally acceptable
- If you like the shape and comfort of the body
- The beauty of the finish
- Overall aesthetic quality
- The sound of the pickups
- The electronic controllability
- Comfort of the bridge
- If the guitar intonates at the 12th fret
- How well is the guitar set up
The “skunk stripe” on this old Tele’s neck remains well-seated.
In general, here’s a list of what you can’t see:
- Are the woods wet under the finish
- How well are the woods dried?
- Will the fretboard shrink so the frets stick out of the neck over time?
- Are the tuning pegs deadening the tone?
- What’s the nut made of and how well it is glued on?
- Are the nut slots too narrow, creating tuning problems?
- Are the frets level?
- Is the truss rod deadening the neck?
- Do the pickups squeal at really high volume? (You may not know this until testing the guitar in a live setting.)
- How thick and how soft is the finish?
- Will the finish last a lifetime?
- Will all the glue joints hold up over time?
- How well does the instrument record?
- Will the frets move over time from reactions to things like sweat?
So, it comes down to trust. Did the guitar-making company tend to all the things that you can’t see when you buy the instrument?
“My goal, as a guitar maker, is that you can take the guitar out of the case and play a gig or a recording session without a repairman working on it first.”
The best way to tell if you want to buy a guitar is to play it! If an instrument is built really well, your experience of playing it will give you a good indication of how well the things you can’t see were done. If the instrument is really trebly and has no bass or midrange, maybe you should walk away from that purchase. If you strum the instrument and go, “Oh my god, that sounds great,” and then you plug it in, and it sounds beautiful—buy it. By the way, online shopping has made this process fairly painless as well, so you can play guitars in stores as well as shop as on the internet.
My goal, as a guitar maker, is that you can take the guitar out of the case and play a gig or a recording session without a repairman working on it first. That said, my personal guitars are often in our PTC (tech center) because of little tweaks that I want done. To tinker, in my mind, is normal. To have to pay for a setup on a brand-new guitar is not. Happy shopping.
Squier Affinity Starcaster Deluxe
The Starcaster broke the mold of semi-hollow guitar design with its offset body shape when it was introduced in the '70s, offering versatile sound and out-of-this-world styling for the most adventurous players. The Affinity Series Starcaster Deluxe features several player-friendly refinements such as a lightweight semi-hollow body, a slim and comfortable “C”-shaped neck with familiar Stratocaster headstock, an adjustable bridge with stop tailpiece for solid tuning stability and sealed die-cast tuning machines with split shafts for smooth, accurate tuning and easy restringing. Loaded with a pair of Squier humbucking pickups with 3-way switching for genre-defying sonic variety, this model is ready to accompany any player at any stage.
Squier Affinity Telecaster Thinline
A superb gateway into the time-honored Fender family, the Squier Affinity Series Telecaster Thinline delivers legendary design and quintessential tone for today’s aspiring guitar hero. This Tele features several player-friendly refinements such as a thin and lightweight chambered body, a slim and comfortable “C”-shaped neck profile, a string-through-body bridge for optimal body resonance and sealed die-cast tuning machines with split shafts for smooth, accurate tuning and easy restringing. Loaded with dual Squier single-coil Tele pickups with 3-way switching for genre-defying sonic variety, this model is ready to accompany any player at any stage.
The plexi-in-a-pedal format won’t work for players that need every amp and effect model under the sun. But if you relish Marshall tones, the Lion ’68 is a brilliant solution for tracking or gigging when the stack can’t make the trip. It offers an expansive tone palette, too. Super Bass and Super Lead models have ample headroom and reproduce the rich, underrated clean sounds of those amps as easily as they kick out Ramones walls of grind or Jimmy Page lead sizzle. The Lion ’68 exhibits lifelike dynamic response. It also reacts to gain devices as hectic as a Super-Fuzz with authenticity. The three amp models, six speaker cabs, and room ambience control offer scads of tone and dynamic variations. You can even jumper the two channels with realistic results. I still think I’d feel weird blasting MC5 riffs through a coffee house PA with the Lion ’68. But I would certainly try it in a bigger room and wouldn’t hesitate to record with this impressive plexi stand-in.
