Cheers to my mate Dave White as he serves up an excellent conversation on the Guitar Gavel podcast this week.
“I told my career advisor when I was 16 that I wanted to be a rock star. And he said I had to choose something more realistic. So, I didn’t.”
Early in his musical career he was a jack of all trades, Tour Manager, sound tech, and t-shirt salesman extraordinaire. That eventually led into “looking after the band’s guitars”.
Dave goes on to share his experience as a professional touring guitar tech and of course we take a look at some of his guitars: among those are a MIJ Fender Jazzmaster, Rickenbacker 330, and a Gibson Melody Maker.
Dave has several side hustles and recently gotten into making custom pickups so we discuss his passion for creating the “perfect” tone for his customers.
You can check out his arsenal of pickup offerings at https://www.northernpickups.co.uk/
Many thanks to Dave for your time and talents. We really had a lively and fun conversation that I think everyone will enjoy as much as we did.
The Epiphone professional was introduced in 1962 and was generally not well-received by the guitar playing public. The run lasted until 1967.
All the features of an amp are built into the guitar allowing the player to control the amp settings on the guitar. The integration was done via a six-pin jack, interfacing the guitar’s controls to the amp.
Therefore, the Professional was sold as a combo with an accompanying amp that had very few onboard controls.
Amp options included an Epiphone EA8P 35-watt or EA7P 15-watt.
Reportedly, less than 400 of these were ever produced in Kalamazoo.
Get a load of all the switch configurations:
Five Tonexpressor switches, Tremolo switch, Reverb switch, Frequency knob for tremolo, Depth knob for tremolo, Reverb control knob, Master volume and tone
Semi-hollow maple body, Double binding, Rosewood fretboard with parallelogram inlays, Single mini humbucker, Frequensator tailpiece