Guitar and bass drawings

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This is a mixture of guitars I've actually owned (eight of the 14), two that friends have owned, and four I've merely coveted from afar.

This reissue of the Gibson Firebird V was owned by the lovely and talented guitarist Ashley Ann Gomez. She named it "El Capitan Squwakey," which is awesome, obviously.

1952 Gibson Les Paul with Bigsby

1976 Gibson Les Paul Deluxe Pro. Happy 40th birthday.

A Gretsch that I owned briefly circa 2001.

1962 Fender Jazzmaster (1993 MIJ reissue)

1964 Fender Jaguar. Paid Scott Lawrimore $400 for this guitar in 1993. He bought several years earlier from the original owner's widow. Sold to Josh Hayes in 2003.

1965 Mustang with aged white finish and red tortoise shell pickguard. Came with the stock Fender hard case (grey tolex and orange fur interior), purchased for $325 from a guy who placed a classified ad in the Daily Californian newspaper. Sadly, I later sold it to the same guy after he answered an ad I placed in the Daily Californian, for the same $325. I remember the woman from the Sacramento band Babel Fish getting one that was the exact same model, year and color, and in basically brand-new condition. I think she paid $500. Those were the days.

Here we have a nice 1969 with the sporty "competition" racing stripe. Always was a fan of the color matched headstocks too. Owned by a friend and bandmate.

1998 Fender MIM Telecaster with a humbucker in the neck pickup spot. Sounded decent and looked nice. I had made a custom pickguard from a world map. In a spasm of what proved to be ill-advised neighborliness, I loaned it to a friend-of-a-friend who told a dolorous tale of both his own guitars being stolen from a venue where his band had played a show. When I didn't hear from him for a while, I tried calling,, only to find that his phone number was no longer in service. Messages sent to his and his band's myspace pages went unanswered. Pretty sure my guitar was liquidated to fund the purchase of illicit pharmaceuticals.

1989 Gibson Les Paul Special with tobacco burst finish, black P-90s and chrome hardware. Purchased from Haight-Ashbury Music for $650 in 1994. Stolen by Crackhead Shortimer along with Fender P-Bass Special #2 (see below).

Gibson Les Paul Junior. I undertook a major lobbying effort to convince Karen Eller, who desperately needed a decent guitar, to buy this one. I believe it was $500. She would eventually acknowledge that I was right (on this lone topic only), and thank me for insisting she at least try playing it, despite what she considered at the time to be the irredeemable shortcoming of its color. She had but one must-have feature in mind, and she didn't intend to consider anything lacking it, no matter what its other virtues might be. And that single characteristic she valued above any other in a guitar? Baby blueness. Of which this red LP Junior, of course, had none at all. It was reliable and it sounded good, though, and she would eventually came to appreciate these traits enough that they at least partially compensated for the utter lack of blueness.

Gibson SG Junior reissue (unknown year). Purchased at the Starving Musician in Santa Clara for $175 (!) Basically brand new; still had the factory protective film on the pickguard and backplate. The P-90 sounded rockin', but even with a super-thin Melody-Maker type neck, it was still totally unbalanced and neck-heavy, which I didn't like. Felt especially weird when contrasted with the 12-lb Les Paul Deluxe Pro.

Janna Matsuoka's 1969 Fender Precision Bass. The heaviest P-bass Fender ever made, strung with the heaviest strings available. I played this (admittedly, with some difficulty) during my tenure in the band Peppercorn (circa 1994-95). Despite the fact that Janna could play this bass far better than I could, she made me go into Guitar Center when it needed new strings because the douchebags who worked there were so patronizing. They would practically refuse to sell her the size strings she wanted, insisting either that she was confused about the size she needed, or that she must be asking for such heavy strings because "these are for your boyfriend, right?"

I have purchased essentially the same Fender Precision Bass Special in red finish with anodized gold pickguard three times. The first one was sold to Michael Carter around 2003. He painted it black and ditched the gold pickguard despite my efforts to dissuade him. The next one I owned was stolen, along with my Les Paul Special, right out of the living room of my Los Angeles apartment by a crackhead who broke in through a first-floor window and ran out the front door, while three people and a dog were home. (I was in the shower.)