In this instalment of Bought & Sold, we sit in with session legend Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter to talk all things electric guitar, from pickup and amp preference to his gear-buying advice, and hear some of his regrets along the way.
But there is only one way to start this conversation, and that’s with the first six-string that really got him excited. As it turns out, it was an offset guitar, very fashionable. But then, with his amp modeling tech wired into his guitar, Baxter has always been ahead of the curve.
What was the first serious guitar that you bought with your own money?
“That would probably be a Fender Jazzmaster. Because number one, when you grow up in Mexico, American guitars were so expensive. But I’d always wanted a Jazzmaster because Bob Bogle from The Ventures had one. I’d sent him a fan letter and he told me to buy one, but they were just too expensive.
“So when I went to the United States to go to school when I was around 13, I went to Manny’s [Music in New York City] with all the money I’d saved up and bought a Jazzmaster. And I still have it today. I love that guitar; I think it’s one of the coolest guitars ever.”
What was the last guitar that you bought, and why?
“The last guitar I bought… for myself? Because I buy a lot of guitars for veterans’ charities and stuff like that. But let’s see… the last guitar I bought for myself, I think, was a Squier Telecaster that has a Jazzmaster pickup installed for rhythm. It’s a great guitar. I bought it just for the hell of it.
“I saw it and thought, ‘Wow, a Jazzmaster pickup,’ and it was put in at the factory. I played it and really loved it, so I told the guy at Guitar Center, ‘Pull down that ’58 Telecaster you have up there,’ which cost about a bazillion dollars, and I spent about an hour setting up the [Squier] guitar.
“They had a guitar repair guy there and I asked if I could use his tools and set up the guitar myself. And very quickly, I compared the two, and the $140 Squier Telecaster, to me, sounded better, so I bought it. I said, ‘Yep, gonna have one of these,’ so I think that’s the last guitar I bought.”
What’s the most incredible find or bargain you’ve ever had when buying guitars?
“In terms of value for money, that would be a Burns Baby Bison guitar that I bought for 35 bucks. I ended up using it on the Donna Summer album [Bad Girls on Hot Stuff] and also started playing it in the studio as well as playing it live. It was a hell of a deal.”
What’s the strongest case of buyer’s remorse you’ve ever had after buying gear?
“I don’t think I’ve ever had buyer’s remorse. Because if I bought something that I wasn’t happy with, I would just rip it apart and put it back together [laughs].”
Have you ever sold a guitar that you now intensely regret letting go of?
We have all these beautiful instruments sitting in a warehouse, and that’s probably a sin that we should probably go to hell for
“That’s an interesting question. I don’t think so because, luckily, I never had to sell a guitar. But I remember John Entwistle and I were at the Rainbow – which is a restaurant and bar right next to The Roxy in Los Angeles, in Hollywood – and we were talking about all the guitars we had. John had like 400 or 500 and I had about 200.
“We just looked at each other and said, ‘You know… we’re idiots. We have all these beautiful instruments sitting in a warehouse, and that’s probably a sin that we should probably go to hell for. It’s a terrible thing.’ We said, ‘There’s all these instruments that want to be played – and should be played by other people.’ So he ended up getting rid of 80 or 90 per cent of his guitars, and I got rid of most of mine as well. But I didn’t regret selling any of them.
“A lot of it was, you know, when you’re a kid, and you don’t have a lot of money, you dream about how many guitars you can have. And then when you get to that point, I think it starts to get obsessive. I used to push my face up against the plate-glass window at Casa Veerkamp, the main guitar store in Mexico City that had American guitars, and look in.
“I’d think, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to do this, but one of these days, I have to get one. I have to do this.’ And so, I guess, it was one of those obsessive things. But I don’t regret that at all. As a matter of fact, it took a huge burden off me to get all that stuff out the door.”
What’s your best tip for anyone looking to buy their ultimate guitar?
“The first thing I would say for sure is that, if you can, ignore everything and just play it. And if it plays great, then it is great. Whether it’s a Squier as opposed to, like, an expensive Fender special, custom – whatever. This is not to say that you shouldn’t buy quality instruments, that’s not the point. The point is that whatever guitar feels good to you is the right guitar. Don’t buy it for any other reason.”
When was the last time you stopped and looked in a guitar shop window or browsed online, and what were you looking at?
“Well, it’s a lot of amplifiers. The first amplifier I bought brand-new was a Fender Vibroverb, and it was a wonderful amplifier. It was the first amplifier that Fender had designed and built with built-in reverb, and it was, and still is, a wonderful amp and great for steel guitar. They have a nice big 15-inch speaker, and as soon as I bought it, I replaced the speaker with a JBL speaker. They’re just wonderful amps.”
If forced to make a choice, would you rather buy a really good guitar and a cheap amp, or a cheap guitar and a top-notch amp?
“Well, it depends. If the cheap guitar is a good enough platform that I can customise in the way I want, then I’d buy the cheap guitar and a great amp. But when you say ‘great’, do you mean great-sounding, or expensive? [For example,] I’ve been working for Roland for 50 years, so I have a place in my heart for them [as an example of an affordable amp maker].
“As a matter of fact, when I play live, I use a pair of Roland Blues Cube Artists because I had a lot to do with designing those amps. So, absolutely, if I had to choose [between a Roland amp and a Fender Princeton, for example], it would be the Katana.”
If you could only use humbuckers or single coils for the rest of your career, which would it be, and why?
“Oh, I would absolutely take the humbuckers, take them apart, rewind the bobbins, coil-split them and then have the best of both worlds [laughs].”
Jeff's go-to rig
“My main guitar is a Roland G-5, which is a Fender Stratocaster that has modeling electronics in it. It’s a project we did some years ago at Roland because I got tired of carrying different guitars with me.
“I can have an electric 12-string, drop it down to a baritone, be able to have a nylon-string guitar, be able to just hit the switch and go to an open G, to be able to play slide, to have humbucking pickups, a Telecaster or a Stratocaster.
Having a number of different guitars and instruments in one guitar makes life delightful
“Having a number of different guitars and instruments in one guitar makes life delightful, especially when playing live. Sometimes you just want to get that nylon-string feel and sound, or you want to be able to go to an electric 12-string or an acoustic 12-string, you know? So that’s my go-to instrument as far as the guitars are concerned.
“For amplifiers, it’s the Roland Blues Cube Artist because, again, I spent a lot of time working on that design with Roland and customising it – especially with the specific Tone Capsule and to be able to reconfigure the electronics of it, so it’s exactly what I want.
“And as far as pedals are concerned, many, many years ago, one of my first projects with Roland was to develop the GP-10 [Guitar Processor] multi-effects pedal. And to this day, I still use it. So I love it.”
- This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.
