This month in Bought & Sold it is the turn of former Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Jake E Lee to check in and discuss a life in guitars.
Not necessarily the signature guitars that Charvel has dutifully kept in production, but the instruments Lee started on, regretted selling, and bought while half-cut browsing the internet because, like the rest of us, he just can't get enough of this instrument.
What was the first serious guitar that you bought with your own money?
Ah, that’s easy: it was a 1967 SG Standard. Before that, I had a retail-store guitar and a couple of cheap ones, but I wanted an SG, mainly because Tony Iommi played one.
And so I got a newspaper [round] and worked for six months to come up with half the money for the SG, which cost $300; my parents chipped in the other $150. I love SGs. To this day, I have more SGs in my collection than any other guitar.
What was the last guitar you bought and why?
I went to soundcheck, plugged it in and it wasn’t the kind of sound I was looking for with Ozzy – really creamy and sweet and smooth and compressed, with a little sag. That was my greatest find
The very last guitar I bought was an Ovation Breadwinner. I remember the ads for them in the 70s and I always thought they looked cool. I always wanted one, and it had to be the white one. One day – because I am a terrible Reverb addict – I had a couple of drinks and started thinking, ‘I wonder if they have an Ovation Breadwinner…’ [Laughs]
I also bought a Yungblud [Epiphone] SG [Junior]. It’s good, but I had it refretted because it had these skinny frets and I like jumbos. I prefer aluminum bridges, too, especially when it’s a one-piece tailpiece like that, because aluminum sings a bit more.
But I can’t swap it with the Yungblud SG because they use a tailpiece that’s slanted and cut specifically to that guitar. But it’s a really good guitar, especially for the price.”
What’s the most incredible find or bargain you’ve ever had when buying guitars?
As far as guitars, there’s no incredible bargains. But amps… I was touring with Ozzy in England, probably for Bark At The Moon. I used to go into every mom-and-pop shop and see what they had. One day, we were in Northern England and I went into this one shop and an older gentleman in his 60s was behind the counter.
I see this old Marshall with the plexiglass logo, covered in dust. I said to the guy, ‘How’s that Marshall? Where is it from?’ He says, ‘I don’t know… it’s been here for the last 20 or 25 years.’ I was like, ‘What? Does it work?’
It was a 45 with the cream back panel and the gold, square plexiglass logo on the front. He picked it up, dusted it off and even though it had been sitting there for years and years, it was brand fucking new. Not a scratch. He said it had been there since maybe ’64 or ’65, and I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ He said, ‘No. Why? Do you want it?’ I said, ‘I’ll take the chance if it’s cheap enough,’ and I got it for around £60 [approx. $80].
For that amount of money, even if it didn’t work, I’d have figured it out – but it worked. I went to soundcheck, plugged it in and it wasn’t the kind of sound I was looking for with Ozzy – really creamy and sweet and smooth and compressed, with a little sag. That was my greatest find. But I think it went the way of the first SG in the early 90s… I sold it.
What’s the strongest case of buyer’s remorse you’ve had after buying gear?
About 20 years ago, I was in a local guitar shop, looking to see what they had, and there was nothing new but this ’67 Telecaster. And I don’t like Telecasters. I don’t like the way they sound. I don’t like the way they look. I have no fondness for Telecasters at all.
But I picked this one up anyway and it felt really good, so I plugged it in. It sounded really good and I had a connection with it. But I put it back down and said, ‘I don’t really like Teles… I don’t even know why I picked it up.’
Two days later, I went back in there because I couldn’t quit thinking about it and it just felt right, but they’d sold it already. So that’s a different kind of buyer’s remorse, right? Maybe we’d call that no-buyer’s remorse [laughs]. I still think about that Tele every once in a while… there was just a connection there. I really wish I’d bought it.
Have you ever sold a guitar that you intensely regret letting go?
How long have you got?! I had a ’56 Les Paul Junior and a ’67 ES-335 that I wish I’d held on to. I wish I still had my original SG that I sold in the 90s, too. The list is too long and too sad.
What’s your best buying tip for anyone looking for their ultimate guitar?
Play it, don’t just hope for the best. With older guitars, there are some that are really special and some that are just okay – you have to play those first. But I’ve bought new guitars online, like an Eastwood Messenger like [the Musicraft model] Mark Farner used to play with Grand Funk Railroad. If it’s a new guitar, the quality is gonna be pretty standard.
Going back to that Tele I mentioned before, I never would have thought about buying that guitar – and I should have bought that guitar – if I hadn’t tried it. That’s why you need to try a guitar. Sometimes you get a connection where you just feel it, like it’s the right one. And sometimes you’ll pick up a guitar that you’re sure will be the right one and it’s not there.
If forced to make a choice, would you rather buy a really good guitar and a cheap amp, or a cheap guitar and a top-notch amp?
Humbuckers are great, but, to me, the P-90s were always the best of both worlds
Oh, no! Not this question. I’d rather have a good amp. The shitty amp will make any guitar sound shitty, but a good amp will make almost any guitar sound good. I have some really cheap guitars that I love, where the action is high and [they’re] kinda funky-sounding. But I don’t have any amps that are shitty. The amp is more important.
If you could only use humbuckers or single coil pickups for the rest of your career, which would it be, and why?
Single coils because that would entail the P-90, which is my favourite pickup. Humbuckers are great, but, to me, the P-90s were always the best of both worlds. They have that articulation, attack and aggressiveness that single coils have, but they’re also kind of smooth and beefy-sounding, like humbuckers.
I’ve always loved P-90s. I couldn’t play them back in the day because they didn’t make humbucking P-90s, so you’d have to deal with all that noise that comes with them, and at the volume I played at, it just was untenable. But these days, I’m actually experimenting with P-90s.
Jake's go-to rig
The amp would be my Friedman JEL-50. Friedman’s are great. They’re the closest thing out there to a good, old Marshall, right? And the Friedman cabinet would be loaded with two 60-watt Creambacks, and I’d have another cabinet with 25-watt Greenbacks. The guitars for live would be what I’m most comfortable with, my Charvel Jake E Lee Pro-Mod [So-Cal Style 1 HSS HT RW] guitar.
For pedals, God, it sounds like I’m saying all Jake E Lee shit, but I’d need my Friedman [IR-J] Jake E Lee boost. I’d want to have an MXR Stereo Chorus, the yellow box – I like that mostly because it has a bass and treble adjustment.
When you hit a chorus pedal, it almost always changes your tone on the bottom- and top-end, but this has adjustments to make sure you keep your core sound and tone, just with chorus. And you can even boost it! For a wah, I’d go with the John Petrucci [Dunlop Crybaby] model, and I’d also have an MXR Carbon Copy, which is standard because it’s simple.
I might also have a Strymon El Capistan reverb and echo, which is basically an Echoplex with added reverb. And the last thing is, I have this Pete Cornish pedal that I love, but it’s too expensive to tour with, so I’d want my DeJayce Ultra Gain for boost and distortion. It’s made by Dannyjoe Carter here in Vegas and it’s one of the best distortion/boost pedals I’ve ever played. When I plugged it into my Pignose amp, it sounded like a Marshall stack!
- This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.
