Guitar Gavel Lick Of The Week with Keith Amyx - Texas Twang
Keith is back with a twangy lick in A.
Love the shirt brother, and THAT HAT! Lookin' like you might be in a motorcycle gang :-). Rock on!
One of Slash’s earliest Les Paul’s is on the auction block and you could be the first bidder. Opening bid, a whopping $1,000,000.
Acquired by Slash in September of 1985 and played for only a few months before he sold it in July of 1986. To be clear, this is not the infamous Appetite For Destruction Kris Derrig LP replica that Slash used to record most of his Appetite solo work. Slash went on to use the Derrig to record many of the songs on Use Your Illusion I and II. Without a doubt, if the Derrig ever goes on the auction block it will definitely leave it’s mark on guitar auction history.
So this is the first fake Les Paul before the second fake, and it’s equally interwoven into the early GnR and Appetite days.
Here’s the story: Slash’s Les Paul that is up for auction is known as the “Hunter Burst”, and it’s not a genuine Gibson, but rather a product of L.A. based guitar builder Peter “Max” Baranet. From 1976-1990 Max arguably built the closest replicas of a classic 59’ Burst on the face of the earth. His guitars have a cult-like following and are now dubbed as a “Max Burst”.
How did he do it? By using the same recipe as Gibson.
• Old growth Honduran mahogany for the body
• Hide glue
• Original formula nitrocellulose finish
• Era specific hardware including PAF pickups, PIO capacitors, ABR-1 bridge, and wires
Of course a true replica wouldn’t be complete without a copied logo so a Max Burst also has “Gibson Les Paul” on the headstock.
A standard Max Burst can fetch as much as $50,000 nowadays.
The provenance of Slash’s Hunter Burst includes the namesake of its first owner, Steve Hunter, who has performed guitar work with Alice Cooper, Aerosmith, Lou Reed, and Peter Gabriel (among many). Slash bought it at Guitars R Us in Los Angeles, and before it ended up in his possession, the original PAF pickups were swapped out for two Seymour Duncan’s. Some of you will remember in the mid 1980s dealers could barely sell a vintage Les Paul. So instead of selling this one with the PAF’s, the guitar was parted out by luthier Roman Rist and the Seymour Duncan’s thrown in.
GnR was signed by Geffen Records in March of 1986 and four months later Slash sold the Hunter Burst. How much of Appetite’s material was possibly composed on this guitar? That answer is probably lost in the L.A. haze.
Here’s the link to the auction listing that ends September 22nd.
That Album - Appetite For Destruction
This past Friday I was honored to be a guest on “That Album” hosted by my friend and “Lick Of The Week” guest Adam Gray. In this conversation we break down the album song by song… admittedly, Adam does a great job breaking down each song :-).