Focus - Hocus Pocus

[donf]

How many of those guys are still alive?

[hippietim]

How many of those guys are still alive?

how many of those guys are still speeding...

[JACKSONFREAK]

Whats with the slanted finger board on that Les Paul? its cut like a hamer cali... Weird.
Gil

[charvelguy]

Paul Hamer did refurbish that Les Paul. Put a thicker maple top on it and had the pickups changed out.
Its an LP personal which is similar to the recording model with slanted singles.
I believe that angle cut fretboard is also part of the Framus design on his sig model which he played in mid 70's.

Speaking of Framus...I believe I am correct in saying that guitar had a contoured scallop for the neck join much like a Weddington. This was in '74. Rik Emmit used one early on in Triumph as well as a Dean Baby V.

Jan was also BIG into Leslies for tremelo/hammond effects and he liked a very bright sound, uniquely almost out of phase type of sound, but did not like strats due to their layout. He used a treble boost as a preamp.

He was also one of the early users of Roland synth guitars, altho...I really don't recall knowing this until recently. The 707 was always something I asociated with Warren Cuccurullo or Steve Stevens and the GR300 with Steve Howe & Adrian Belew.

[fred dons]

I worked on Jan's Les Paul personal and the fingerboard is the only thing original on it (ok, also the back of the body)

Hamer first worked on it but the current top was installed by Heins guitars, the neck has been replaced, the headstock has been replaced (Jan is not very carefull with his guitars), the pups are 3 pafs from an old sg, it now has a stetsbar trem instead of a stoptail
and now it has a an inlay of Jan holding a guitar on the headstock (sorry no pics, I can't find the photo right now)

[charvelguy]

Thats interesting! So you've bumped into him in your neck of the woods?
I've seen pics of your work, very nice stuff.

[fred dons]

he lives quite close buy and a friend of mine ussually does the maintenance of his guitars (ussually headstock breaks, he does not have a guitar without a headstock break, according to him his mother in law is quite clumsy )
he is quite nice if you get to know him
I do think he is getting a bit deaf because his tone on stage is really realy piercing

[heartfielder]

Tom,

Here's some of Fred Don's work !!!

[IMG][/IMG]

Nice stuff indeed !!!! That's what he did on the Ibanez Artfield AFD5-AMZ.

I've seen the inlay on Jan's guitar ... AWESOME !!!!

[charvelguy]

Blame it on the Mother in law..thats funny. That is really nice work, has an old world vibe to it. Thanks for sharing the story and the pic.

[5074charvel]

I saw Jan live in ´85 or so. The encore was a ZZ Top song played on a Roland guitar synth through a Marshall. Unfortunatly he almost never tours to places where I could see him.

[lerxstcat]

Gary Hoey's instrumental version slays the original

Matter of taste, I guess. Gary Hoey is awesome but I think his version of Hocus Pocus is kind of sterile. I was glad to hear it get airplay because it was A version of the song and because I like Hoey, but I prefer the original.

[AlexL]

Interesting. I never knew who did that song. Or what it was called.

Great guitar work, especially considering the fact that that was 1973.

One thing, though -

Ian Anderson called: he wants his flute solo back.


- E.