John Buckman's Guitars I've been playing guitar since I was 12. I started out as a jazz guitarist, then played jazz bass for a while, then moved permanently back to the electric guitar. I used to play a huge amount, working with a drum machine and a four track recorder. In the past two years, I have not played much, because I've been all wrapped up with programming. Here's a brief summary of my current guitars: My first guitar was a $80 electric guitar with a "K" on the headstock. I'm not sure if it meant K-Mart, but it seemed likely. I struggled to build a few guitars, with very poor results (one had a plywood body!). After 4 or 5 years of guitar lessons, my parents volunteered to split the cost of a new guitar with me. After a few months of looking at various models, I settled on a custom-built guitar by someone named Ronaldo Orlandoni, who's shop is in Union City, New Jersey. This is a very close replica of the early Fender Stratocasters. Ronaldo had an old strat, and had measured every inch of it in order to build copies: he even hand-winds the pickups. The guitar also has a rare feature: a phase inversion switch which reverses the polarity of the two individual pickups in the humbucker. This is one of the things that gave Hendrix his characteristic sound, and it's a feature I like quite a bit. This is the last guitar I built for myself, because it actually was a success. It has a Charvel-Jackson guitar neck, a String & Things body, and a high-power humbucker. The only controls on it are a volume knob and a single/double coil switch. Two years ago I was seduced into the fantasy of MIDI Guitar controllers, and bought the Roland GR-1 system. On the bottom right of the photograph, you can see the GR-1 attachment, with a cable going to its special pickup. I don't recommend the GR-1 for sequencing, however, because the MIDI tracking is pretty bad. The internal sounds work perfectly, so if you're a live player you might like it. This in an Ovation acoustic guitar with a built in pickup. The Ovations are interesting because the back of the body is made of fiberglass. The acoustic sound is quite good, but the pickup sound is pretty tiny, and when you add a little bass, it is boomy as well. This is a Strings & Things custom-made bass that I bought used in Maine. Its a nice, snappy sounding bass.