Mick's Guitars

Over the years I have owned a fair few axes. I have always seen guitars as just a working tool and I tend not to collect them as such. One of my recent favourites was the Yamaha M.S.G. which was designed by Martyn Booth and I was saddened to see it dropped from the Yamaha catalogue. At this moment I am playing a Gordon-Smith S.G. that John Smith made for me, and it's a great axe for gigging although I don't use it as much for recording.
Because of the diversity of the type of work I'm now doing, I have 6 working guitars, all set up differently for the respective styles that I am playing. For open chord tunings ( I use quite a few odd ones ) I have a Fender Squire Stratocaster with a trilogy bridge, raised nut, wired with one normal Fender neck pick up, one Hot rail and one Cool rail pick up.
With this particular axe I tend to use open G & E tunings which work well for electric slide playing. I use the S.G. tuned to concert for all my live band work, and have a beat up old Les Paul junior sometimes just for back up.
For acoustic slide work I have a Yamaha A.P.X.4 set up with a very high action for bottle neck playing, I use an open D tuning for this box, it's nothing fancy, but it works for me!.
I also have 2 of the new Yamaha A.E.X. slimline electro acoustics and these work well for me in a number of applications. When I'm doing solo gigs I use one A.E.X. for open chord tuning, I've had it set up for picking & slide playing or both. The other A.E.X. is set up normally and I use this with standard concert tuning.

Below is a list of all the guitars that I have owned and used and the times that I used them as best that I can recall.

Piecowood nylon strung spanish!??(don't ask!) circa 1953.

Arnold Hoyer archtop with pick up.(circa 1955.)

Futurama 3 electric 3 p.u. model. circa 1958.

Fender Stratocaster circa 1959.

Gibson S.G. Standard 1963.

Ecko 12 string acoustic with pick up.( this guitar was strung as a 9 or 10 string guitar and set for slide playing & open chord tuning ) 1966.

6 String Tenor Guitar no makers name. I bought this beaten up old box in a junk shop in Brixton and whilst we were recording the " Getting to This" album, I wrote the short number " Long Bomb Blues" and for fun, include it in the album. I think the guitar got smashed shortly afterwards and rightly so!!

Danelectro electric 12 string weird shape like a lyre! 1969.

Les Paul junior double cutaway. 1970.

Gibson 335 P.90 P.U. model 1971.

Yamaha S.G.2000.1979. Yamaha S.G.1500 1979. Yamaha M.S.G. (the best they ever made!) 1980.

Gibson Artist Recording model. 1982.

Fender Telecaster Scheckter model 1984.

Yamaha S.G. 200 ( a real plank but sounded really cool! ) 1988.

Fender Strat de luxe plus 1990.

Fender Stratocaster standard model 1992.

Patrick Eggle New Yorker de luxe (signature model) 1994.

Fender Squire Strat with Trilogy bridge. 1996.

Yamaha A.P.X. 4.electro acoustic.1996. Yamaha A.E.X. electro acoustic x 2 1998

Gordon-Smith S.G. double p.u. model with individual coil taps (signature model) 1998.

Fret King Corona. New model by Trevor Wilkinson

Martin Steelbodied type dobro. I got on fine with this guitar accoustically but was not highly chuffed with the electronics

Tanglewood Electro Acoustic TW45 NSB I used this on the last album and a few sessions and it sounds really sweet the pick up system is one of the best I've used so far.

Peavey solidbodied electric with a quite unique feature of a piezo pick up in the brig, with the ability to mix the accoustic sounds generated by the piezo with the humbucking pick ups sounds really sweet.

That's about as many as I can remember, if I've left any out, let me know!.