Genre-traversing technical maestro Andy Timmons has, self-admittedly, owned “a long chain of guitars,” starting with an Elektra Les Paul he bought in 1976. So, in his Indiana Jones-style search for preloved axes, what was his most incredible find?
“I got a ’65 Strat on eBay that had been really poorly refinished and had some issues with the neck, and pieces and chunks of wood missing,” he tells Guitarist.
“Somebody hadn’t treated this guitar very well – but that made it kind of affordable.The pickups were original and I thought, ‘I can take a gamble on it.’”
Timmons had his luthier strip it down to its core, “past the red refinish down to the original ’burst,” but years of neglect meant he couldn't save the original finish. Instead, the virtuoso decided to take another approach and, ultimately, gave the guitar a total makeover.
“I had him refinish it to look like the white Strat that Hendrix would play or like the one on Jeff Beck’s Wired album cover,” he explains.
“And you know what? It may be the best-sounding Strat I’ve got. It’s just got this thing to it. It turned out to be a good investment because it’s a working guitar that I’ve used on a lot of records and one that I still use quite a bit.”
Just last month, Timmons participated in George Benson's Breezin’ with the Stars guitar camp, alongside fellow guitarists Cory Wong, Al Di Meola, Tommy Emmanuel, and Lee Ritenour, among many others.
For more from Andy Timmons, plus new interviews with Rosanne Cash and Brian May, pick up issue 514 of Guitarist at Magazines Direct.
