The Eagles guitar legend Vince Gill has revealed he once turned down Fender's offer to recreate his holy grail 1953 Telecaster, which is widely seen as one of the finest Blackguard Teles ever made.
Discussing the prized six-string during a new episode of Chris Shiflett's Shred with Shifty podcast, Gill says, “I bought this guitar in a music store in 1978 from an old friend, and I didn't pay very much for it back then. I think I paid $450 for it, which was maybe a couple hundred bucks less than it was worth.”
Blackguard Telecasters are shrouded in history and mythology. Indeed, Gill's electric guitar comes from a period where each build was individualistic, and performed differently depending on who crafted it – and his white example is especially unique.
“I've got another 20 Blackguards probably, but none of them none of them have the same neck shape as this one,” Gill continues. “It's so unique.
“The flat pole pieces of the early Blackguard Teles are warmer sounding than once they started raising the pole pieces. Once they got into ’56, ’57, they got a lot brighter. And I don't know why. I've always preferred that flat pole piece sound.
“And there's something about this neck,” he adds. “It's the most perfectly contoured neck of any Fender I've ever held. It was this way when I got it; all the finish had gone. It had been played, and I don't think anyone cut it down. I don't see any sand marks. Every neck [from that period] was a little bit different. I don't think they had a particular shape. I'll pick up a lot of old early ’50s fenders and the necks are way too big.
“It’s the first Tele I bought, and it’s still my favorite. This guitar is an anomaly.”
Years of buying similarly aged Teles in the quest for a stablemate for his main guitar proved fruitless. So, when Fender came knocking, it would be easy to think that Gill would jump at the chance of a painstaking recreation of such a one-of-a-kind instrument. The guitar would finally have a worthy understudy.
Likewise, Fender probably thought it was onto a winner from the off. But any confidence the firm may have had was ultimately misplaced.
“I'd played this guitar since 1978,” Gill details. “Back in the early ’90s when I was starting to kind of blow up a little bit, Fender came to me and said, ‘We want to make a Vince Gil model.’ I said, ‘Why would you want to do that?’
“They said, ‘Well, you're doing really good and we think it'd be cool.’ I said, ‘No disrespect intended, but you can't make a guitar as good as my old white one.’ They said, ‘Well, we'd like to try.’
Fender did manage to twist Gill's arm a little and a prototype was eventually built. The problem was, he says, “It wasn't great.”
“My ego is not such that I need a model of my own name on it to satisfy me,” he concludes. “I think I lost that guitar in a big flood about 15 years ago.”
Vince Gill joined the Eagles in 2017 as a replacement for the late Glenn Fry. He says playing with the group he’s always loved had him “transported back to being a kid in my bedroom.”
Following Steuart Smith’s forced retirement from touring, Gill now has a new bandmate in Chris Holt.
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