“It’s just one of those that called to me”: Why Andy Summers has abandoned his Strat for a new boutique guitar
Andy Summers’ love for Stratocasters is no secret, but The Police guitarist has been shunning them of late in favour of a new boutique guitar.
Speaking to Ultimate Guitar’s On the Record podcast, he discusses his longstanding association with Fender as well as his current favourite axe.
READ MORE: Why Powers Electric is the most interesting new guitar brand on the planet
“I’ve got this guitar called a Powers Electric, which is made by Andy Powers,” he says. “He is the guy who oversees Taylor Guitars in San Diego. So he is a guitar maker, and he’s also the boss of that, because I think Bob Taylor has moved on or something, or he’s retiring, and now Andy Powers has made these little guitars as a sort of offshoot of Taylor.”
He continues, “They’re incredible guitars. I picked one up in the Guitar Emporium in Massachusetts while I was on tour very recently. I don’t go to a lot of guitar stores, but they had great guitars, all that stuff you’d expect – the Martins, the Gibsons, the Fenders, and then there was this little electric guitar over there, and I thought that’s a really hip looking guitar.
“I picked this thing up. It’s got a short-scale neck, and oh my god, it plays so easily. I started playing it and it’s just one of those that called to me. It’s a fantastic guitar. I bought a yellow one and I went straight on stage with it. I didn’t hesitate.”
He says that he’s such a fan, he played it on stage the night he bought it, and went back the next day to buy another.
“Then I bought another one on the internet,“ he adds. “So I’ve got three of them – I’ve got a yellow one, a green one, and a purple one. I’m just about to go into Brazil for five weeks and I’m taking that guitar. So that’s the first time I will have not gone taking the normal Strat with me. I will have a Strat down there as well, but I think the guy has got a kind of a breakthrough guitar with this one. Yeah, it’s amazing.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Summers discusses the potential for new music. “In August, I might try to make a couple of tracks to put on Spotify or whatever,” he says. “I almost feel a way you can go forward now is to just keep putting out tracks and eventually pull them all together and put it out as an album. Meanwhile, you can keep people interested by doing one track at a time. This is what my manager is telling me, anyway.
“I’m so used to a lifetime of making records, the sequencing of it all. But I sort of like the freshness of the idea of just doing one track.”
Check out the full interview here:
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
