The trappings of rock stardom have changed a great deal since the 1970s. The money and record sales ain’t what they used to be, the drug-fueled parties in Laurel Canyon have died out, and being on the cover of the Rolling Stone doesn’t have the cachet it once did.
But even if having a wall full of platinum records is a thing of the past, there remains one irrefutable sign of having made it – a signature instrument. Bonus points if said instrument is made by one of the most famous guitar makers of all time.
So, even if the good old days remain the old days, psychedelic rockers Khruangbin have irrefutably hit the bigs, as guitarist Mark Speer and bassist Laura Lee Ochoa became the first members of a band to have a signature guitar and bass come out at the same time in Fender history.
The band’s connection with Fender goes back to Speer’s early days, when he had been relying on gear picked up second-hand from friends. Eventually, he found himself at a Houston music store’s going-out-of-business sale, and that’s when he spotted the Strat that became the first guitar he ever bought.
“All the shiny, pointy guitars were gone, and this one was still on the wall, and they had lowered the price significantly so I could afford it,” he says. “So I went ahead and got it, and it became the guitar I played and still play. And I don’t know – something just drew me to that one. I just really liked how it looked, how it felt.”
For Ochoa, the road to a signature model had more twists and turns. The bass guitar she’d been playing, the one Fender used as the basis for the series of Jazz basses that carry her name, wasn’t a Fender at all.
“When I started playing bass, I wanted a Fender, because that’s the cool brand,” she says. “It was the brand I always sort of idolized as somebody who wanted to be in a band but was never in a band. Mark helped me get my first bass, which was a knockoff Fender, which is what I’ve been playing for the history of Khruangbin.
“It’s something that looked and felt like a Fender but was something I could afford at that point. And what’s so wild is that now I have a signature model, essentially based off of a knockoff Fender.”
The appeal of Fenders for the Khruangbin members is simple: the guitars are durable and endlessly modifiable. Those are key attributes for a band that spends big chunks of the year either on the road or in the studio.
“I’ve spent a lot of time as a tech and have repaired many different kinds of guitars, and the ones that never come up with broken necks or headstocks or bodies ever are Strats and Teles,” Speer says. “They just don’t break.”
That sort of pragmatism is the dominant theme when it comes to how Speer and Ochoa customized their signature models. For instance, for many Strat purists, putting a single humbucker in the bridge position is already bordering on a sin. Putting another one in the neck position is downright blasphemous.
For Speer, it was simply a matter of finding a solution to a problem. While he kept a ’70s Strat pickup in the middle, to maintain some semblance of the traditional Strat tone, he opted for DiMarzio Pro Tracks in the neck and bridge.
While the switch allows him to pursue some high-gain tones, it was mostly a practical decision to make recording easier.
“I was working for producers in studios that range from an actual recording studio to home/bedroom situations, and once you’ve got single-coils in a noisy room, the producer doesn’t care that it’s a Strat; that producer wants to get a clean sound,” he says.
“It’s like, well, I’m buzzing, and I can’t change the buzz, so let me just go ahead and upgrade my pickups so they don’t buzz.”
His decision to use a vintage-style synchronized trem system was based on how it allows for easy tunings and adjustments, while Graph Tech TUSQ saddles allow for an extended string life. The guitar also features a custom C-shape neck and jumbo frets.
For Ochoa, it was important for her bass to be user-friendly, to the point that a beginner would be comfortable learning on it.
I feel like it is something that a bass player who’s just starting out can really find themselves on
Laura Lee Ochoa
“I feel like it is something that a bass player who’s just starting out can really find themselves on; the humbucker pickup allows you to play without having so much buzz as a beginner, which is a really difficult thing to kind of get around,” she says.
To add to that clean, buzz-free sound, the signature model also comes with a little trick Ochoa picked up from her bandmate.
“I shove foam in the bottom of where my strings are in the ashtray,” she says. “It’s covered by the ashtray, so it looks cool and you can’t see the foam, but the foam is in there to even further make your tone nicer, and the sustain really nice, and the buzz even less.”
Like Speer, she opted for jumbo frets (“I really like to dig in when I play,” she says), as well as an electronics system featuring Volume and Tone knobs for each pickup. It was a customization that came during one of Khruangbin’s tours, and Ochoa credits Speer with implementing it.
“The electronics that came on that knockoff bass, they just kind of died,” Speer says. “The pots just got worn out, so we decided to get that because, honestly, the stacked concentric knobs looked really cool. It’s actually a throwback.
“I think Fender built them like this for maybe a couple years and that was it. But they look really cool, and they seem really functional, because now you have more options as to how you want to shape the tone of those pickups.”
Khruangbin’s signature sound varies wildly, drawing influence from world music, soul, psychedelia, blues and rock, so the instruments they play have to be adaptable. The end result, Speer said, is a tool he hopes will find its way into the hands of players across the musical spectrum.
“This guitar will work,” he says. “I’ll tell you that you can pretty much play almost any genre you want to play on this guitar. If you want, you can modify it to your own special action and relief.
“If you wanted to get really, really deep with it, you could put in a push-pull pot on one of the tone knobs so that the bridge and neck pickup both turn on at the same time. You could make it be single-coil, and it would sound more or less like a Tele – if you want to go that far. It will get you 90 to 95 percent of where you want to be for most genres.”
- This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.
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