Here's my last guitar blog from the summer tour. I'll wrap it up by mentioning two guitars that only made one night appearances on this tour and give a few words about the X-Stroyer as it made it onstage every night of the tour.

Since we were in Mexico City I'll mention the Teotihuacan mask given to me at the Teotihuacan pyramids just outside Mexico City about nine years ago. Ironically I visited those same pyramids again and bumped into the person affectionately known as 'Gorilla' to his friends who gave me my mask. This mask is also the muse for the face that appears on 'Maya' adorning the first fret and two other of my Jackson Supreme guitars (including the grey one which is still on display at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas).

First off the Jackson PC-1 in trans black metallic (Tranny): This guitar has the usual Dimarzio super 3 and HS-2 pickups with a Jackson sustainer/driver pickup in the neck position. It has FU-TONE saddles and titanium block, a maple neck and fingerboard and D'Addario 13-54 gauge strings. I played it on 'Let's Get Rocked’. You can also see this guitar in the 'Nine Lives' video with Tim Mcgraw.

Next up is the Jackson Telecaster. This guitar was custom made in the early 2000s. It originally had a maple neck and fingerboard but it never worked 100% for me. It sounded good and made it out on a few tours but it didn't make me want to play it. When my friend Lance suggested how good it would look with a rosewood fingerboard I asked the Jackson custom shop if they could give it a makeover. Mike Shannon created a beautiful fat neck with a rosewood fingerboard. I couldn't put it down after it arrived on tour, taking it to the hotel room everyday. I played it once onstage this summer I think, at Bristow, Virginia on 'Love Bites'. I'll be playing it in the studio on two new Delta Deep songs next week when I get home off tour. It has an ash body, a Dimarzio Area Hot T pickup in the bridge position and a Dimarzio Area T chrome (DP417C) in the neck position. It has D'Addario 13-54 gauge strings. After Scott set it up it feels very different to my PC-1's although it does have a PC-1 neck on it. Mainly because it has a fixed bridge and not my usual tremelo, floating bridge setup now it plays and sounds amazing.

The Jackson PC X-Stroyer continued to wow me on the whole tour. The sound was spectacular and I put this down to there being so much wood involved. It's such a mass of wood making it rather heavy (and I do have some really heavy guitars). With all the bells and whistles that are featured on the PC-1's and Supremes it comes out and slays. Having said that it's nowhere near as comfortable to play as a PC-1 and I wouldn't dream of playing it all night, which I have done with some of my PC-1's-most notably my old green and first one 'Kermit' that stayed in tune all night for the live recording of the Cybernauts live concert in 1996. The X-Stroyer isn't a production model but I'm sure it'll be available as a custom guitar if anyone's man enough for it.

I'd like to thank everyone who came and saw us on this tour; Scott Appleton who made the guitars perform like the champs that they are; Gabriel who is traveling with us on the Mexico leg of the tour who showed us around and shared with me and Helen the most amazing cultural experiences in Mexico City; and my lovely wife Helen Collen who made me and my guitars look great with her excellent photography.

See photos HERE

Back