The WORST thing you could do to a Les Paul?! | Friday Fretworks 

Only 3 US dates? More please?

Was that just a backing track or??

Tickets already booked for Manchester U.K. 👍🏻😊

I wish you guy's would perform live here in Northern California.

@@user-iy7yb1sh8g Yeah I could find my way back to Chico for something like that.

Yeah, I had a friend with a 58 and 60 LP that his dad gave him. All he wanted was a BC rich warlock at the time. Go figure. He traded the gold top for a couple of pedals in the 80's . Not sure what happened to the 60.

when i first met my luthier in some bavarian shack in the forest, he dropped a lp he was playing in my lap, through his plexi. i was a beginner, ibanez…emgs…. wow. spanky, responsive like a strat. like a tele on steroids. big notes just jumped out and stood. remember that feeling. i played smells like teen spirit. killing in the name of. he smirked. „nice guitar, did you built it?“ nope. its a real 58 i got in for changing frets. noone in us wants to touch it. that was 1998.

Well said. I'm a little younger, so I speak for the late 70's. In NYC where I'm from, Les Pauls were everywhere. They were dirt cheap and you played them because there weren't a ton of options like now. You basically played Gibson or Fender or a knockoff. When other brands started popping up and getting popular, you had to practically give them away because nobody wanted them. IMO, they were, and still are junk, and unless you're an older player feeling nostalgic, the people paying big bucks for them now aren't real players, they're collectors who think because it's old, it's a good investment. Those who claim they're great are either lying to themselves or found the one in a hundred that were somewhat decent by 70's standards.

Your brother was obviously a whiner. The world lacked nothing in wisdom about guitars. There is no wisdom to tell. All in your imagination.

Yes, sir. You’ve lived the experience and don’t need gear to live the moment 🙂

@@fritz596....Listen to this man. He speaks wise words! 👌🏻

@@ChrisBuckGuitaryou’re too humble. You laid down a good one. Thanks for the feels.

@@thomaskafafian2871 Haha. Don’t worry, I was joking. A delay pedal will make bad playing sound worse. Repeatedly 😆

@@fritz596....make a vid

@@fritz596.... ‘cause i’d like to hear it

Right up there with his jams on his Fender no caster video.

too bad he's just sitting there alone...the arrangement is clearly meant to be played in ensemble

Loved it

Freakin' awesome.!

That's why we all meet here at the same time, every week!

Just most of the internet guitar world.

Yep, another fretboard assassination.

No!

creepy as fk

"omg he's not trying to fool us"...mmm-kaaaay

He’s at the elite level where the virtuosic technical skill almost disappears and instead it’s replaced with just moving emotional expression.

​@G5Hohn that's a great way to put it, and 100% true!

100% agree. I love Chris' openings but this was truly epic. Rehearsed or completely improv, I do not know but allowed myself to enjoy. I think we all have our own style but Chris's mastery of meeting melody to technique to feeling is just completely "next level". It inspires me for my next level but am completely comfortable in realizing Chris' Imagination and mastery really is at a level I will reach for but never touch.

@@2010njdevilI’ve definitely heard that piece before on another video.

Agreed! Beautiful work.... very inspiring.

Its quite something for one so young. can you imagine how good he's gonna be when he gets to his forties?

Don´t be fooled.....guitar doesn´t sound if it´s on the wall. Who makes it sound this way it´s Mr. Buck. 😅

And so does the playing

It's what he's doing with it.

That dirt is doing most of the tone your hearing. Chris is a pure savage but he’s got fancy pedals and amps making most of the sound your hearing.

It’s so subjective the sound of wood transmitted through pickups that we give these guitars more credit than they deserve. Especially now a days. I own several Gibsons and a Squier affinity with $150 pickups sounds just as good or if not better than my ‘09 LP with Burstbuckers.

“Blackie”? I think you mean “Old Black”, but I could have that wrong.

Old Black! The ultimate Gibson "partscaster". It has a replacement neck with an SG/ES 335 headstock. The original 1953 neck was replaced at the Gibson factory before Neil ever got the guitar, at a time when Gibson didn't build Les Pauls (after 1960, but before mid-1968). Hence the SG/ES crown (or "wheat stack") graphic and no "Les Paul model" logo. The original bridge P-90 was long gone and had been replaced with a DeArmond single coil that hummed like crazy. Neil brought the pickup to a music shop in Los Angeles to get it repaired. When he returned the next week to pick up the pickup (hurr-hurr...), the shop was gone. According to some versions of the story, along with the entire building it was in - now just a vacant lot with nothing but a hole in the ground. That part of the story might not be true. Or maybe it is... He first replaced the missing bridge PU with a Gretsch FilterTron for a while, then replaced that one with the Firebird humbucker that's been in there ever since 1972. Nothing on that guitar is an original factory part from 1953, except for the body (refinished in black) and the neck pickup (but not the chrome cover on it). It even has/had extra bindings (headstock) and stripe inlays (back of the body and neck) that a previous owner put on it - some of which fell off at some point and never got replaced. You can clearly see in close-up pictures, that the front of the headstock used to have bindings that are completely gone - only the empty slots remain. None of the hardware or chrome covers on it are orginal. Old Black is a totally unique and very weird instrument. The more you learn about it, the stranger it gets. For example, one of the coils in the Firebird humbucker doesn't work properly and it has a lower output than regular pickups of that type. It has a mini toggle switch between the volume and tone knobs to bypass the controls. Even Neil himself has said that he doesn't know everything about his favourite electric guitar, especially what exactly happened to it before he got it in a trade from Jim Messina. Jim got Neil's 1958 Gretsch 6120 for the Les Paul. Apparently, one of the first things Neil did with it, was to to convert it from the stop tailpiece/shaved-down tune-o-matic that was on it instead of the orginal stopbar bridge, to a Bigsby B3/shaved-down tune-o-matic combo. He was used to playing his Gretsch with a Bigsby and wanted the same vibrato system on his Les Paul. He later replaced the B3 with a B7 with a tension bar, because the B3 didn't put enough string pressure on the bridge, due to the flatter neck angle that the early trapeze bridge or stopbar-equipped Les Pauls had, compared to the later stop tailpiece/tune-o-matic versions. That's the reason why the tune-o-matic on it is shaved-down (reduced in height), a regular unmodified one can't be lowered enough to get a playable action. When Neil had worn down the frets so much, they were almost level with the fretboard wood in some spots, almost down to the tangs, his guitar tech Larry Cragg replaced them... and promptly got yelled at in a fit of rage because he "ruined" the guitar. Neil hated how Old Black felt and played now and refused to touch it again. Finally he ordered Larry to "put the old frets back in" to attempt to restore the "old feeling". Which was impossible because they had broken and crumbled into pieces during the removal. Larry then carefully filed the brandnew frets down until they were almost as low as the old ones and had a similar wear pattern - and peace and love were restored. Neil almost never uses the the neck pickup. His classic sound is all bridge pickup, all the time, with all controls on the guitar on "ten" - or even entirely bypassed with the mini toggle. The different gain levels are achieved with the "Whizzer" device on top of his tweed Deluxe, that mechanically/physically changes the settings of the controls on the amp to four preprogrammed positions. But when he recorded his "Greendale" album, he _only_ played on the neck pickup, never on the bridge PU. Because he had decided that it was going to be "the neck pickup album". Inspiration comes in many forms. Larry Cragg is quite the character, too. Like Neil, he's a firm believer in the philosophy that passive control potentiometers on electric guitars all suck - especially, but not limited to, while playing with overdriven tube amplifiers - and should always be fully open or bypassed. Larry even tried to convince Carlos Santana once or twice to not use the volume controls and tone controls on his guitars for his different gain levels and sounds anymore, when he worked on his instruments. I'm sure that went over REALLY well with Carlos... It's only an essential part of his playing style... Larry is also a committed proponent of the theory that guitar necks should be "dead flat", completely straight with no relief whatsoever. He claims that it makes the neck "more rigid" and sounds better. Physically, it obviously makes no sense, because you pay for that increase in "rigidity" with a worse string action on the upper frets, to avoid rattling noises in the lower positions. Every luthier or guitar tech who isn't a follower of the "Cragg philosophy" will tell you that _some_ neck relief is absolutely necessary if you want the best possible setup across and along the entire neck of your guitar. The amplitude of the vibrating string needs a little room - you simply can't beat the laws of physics. I DARE anyone to tell me they can _hear_ a difference between a completely straight neck with a slightly higher action on the upper frets - and the same neck on the same guitar with the correct slight relief, with a better overall string action everywhere on the neck (pickups adjusted to the same distance to the open strings, of course). I'm not talking about liking the haptic "feel" of one over the other in the higher register, that's a personal subjective preference. I'm talking about the SOUND. I dare you to tell me there's a difference! I got sidetracked somewhere... What was I talking about? Oh yes, Old Black is a fascinating musical instrument with almost as many legends, lore, history, mystery, and fun facts attached to it as its owner! I barely scratched the surface. It's completely different from any other Les Paul on the planet, even from the other modified 1953 gold tops Neil Young uses as spares or occasional alternatives. One of a kind.

And to sum it up - Old Black is my favorite guitar of any-especially when in the hands of it’s master-Neil Young.

​@@henrygvidonas9573interesting stuff. Thanks for the info.

@@alexo5861No, you are not wrong. It is indeed Old Black.

How many people buy their dream guitar or bass then are too afraid to play them? 😔

I gotta say, it is some mighty tasty licks. Mighty tasty.

he's a soul man. riff cred helps sell his spiel ...

I thought I was on the right track. This guy is truly inspirational with his playing.

After listening to each a few times, Wow!, I'm leaning towards the outtro with the P90s.