“I was using a Les Paul at the time, and I had so many tuning problems with it that I’d get very frustrated”: Why Adrian Smith ditched Gibson Les Pauls for Jacksons
Iron Maiden guitarist Adrian Smith has shared what made him jump ship from Gibson to Jackson back in the 2000s.
Smith might have been a longtime Les Paul player, but he was headhunted for Jackson at a very convenient moment, just as he was starting to get disillusioned with his usual brand. He’s since put his name on numerous signatures for Jackson as one of the brand’s most high profile artists, the first of which came to market in 2007.
READ MORE: Adrian Smith recalls the iconic Iron Maiden solo he recorded “extremely hungover”
“What happened originally was Grover Jackson himself used to come down to [Iron] Maiden shows when we played in California,” Smith tells Guitar World. “He was a really lovely guy, and he is very easy to get on with, very easy to talk to.
“I was using a [Gibson] Les Paul at the time, and I had so many tuning problems with it that I’d get very frustrated.”
“Grover Jackson used to bring down these guitars, but some of them weren’t even finished,” Smith recalls. “It was just like raw wood, and he’d change the pickups backstage. He’d say, ‘Try this,’ and I’d go out and try it on that night, you know?”
Smith was then invited to the Jackson factory, where work began on his signature Stratocaster build, using a Charvel San Dimas body.
“He brought me to the factory, and I copied a neck off an old Strat. That’s basically the guitar but with a few refinements,” he says. “The truss rod was more accessible, so you could adjust the truss rod without taking the neck off. It’s just a superb, easy-to-play, great-sounding, reliable guitar.” Despite “a few little mods over the years”, Smith’s first signature has mostly remained constant in its design.
Last year, Adrian Smith recalled the iconic Iron Maiden solo he recorded “extremely hungover”. “We were a bunch of young guys and we’d go out at night and party very hard. We were out until three in the morning and I went home thinking ‘We’re not working tomorrow, we’ve gone too hard,’” he said. “But at 10 in the morning [producer] Martin [Birch] – who partied harder than any of us – called me into the studio and he was sitting there with Robert Palmer, the Addicted To Love guy. He had me sit at the desk and do the solo. I was really in pain but I pulled it off. Funnily, it’s my favourite.”
The post “I was using a Les Paul at the time, and I had so many tuning problems with it that I’d get very frustrated”: Why Adrian Smith ditched Gibson Les Pauls for Jacksons appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
