Musicians and their custom or modified instruments

Michael Angelo and his 4-neck metal shredder.

 

My very favorite might be Michael Stearns and his sonic sculpture that is Lyra. This crazy thing is a 20ft high contraption utilizing 156 microtonal-tuned strings with pickups. It fills a room. You play it by walking around the room and gliding your hands/fingers across the strings and I'm assuming one can also pluck it.

 

Gene Simmons and his 'ax' bass guitar. (I can't post a picture due to being on my phone).

I always hated Entwistle's basses. That's probably an unpopular opinion, but whatever.

 

Modified instruments

Didn't Danny Gatton attach an electrical control box on to the body of 1 of his guitars?

 

Dizzy Gillespie's bent trumpet.

 

les paul's log

 

try again

223651

 

Dave Hill of Slade, Super Yob guitar.

 

The Nash Strat

 

Yeah! Junior Brown! He is long overdue for a new album.

Other notable mentions include Vishwa Mohan Bhatt's Mohan Vina which is a Veena with the body of a classical guitar.

Also, Ry Cooder had been seen and heard throughout the 90s with a lengthy and heavy thing called the floor slide which he mainly used on the soundtrack to "Trespass" and for which he used something of the size of a longdrink glass as a slide.

If I had the time, I could probably come up with a few more.

 

Though to be fair, IIRC Gibson stopped making the EDS1275 around 1966 or so...by the time Jimmy Page needed one (mainly to play "Stairway To Heaven" live) he had to have one custom built. That damn doubleneck probably weighed more than Jimmy did in the seventies!

Me, I've always been partial to Ronnie Wood's custom made Zemaitis guitars (especially the black one with the resonator):

 

...what about the famous doubleneck guitars Mike Rutherford used in Genesis? Are those custom, particularly the Rickenbacker Microfret:

 

Geddy Lee's double neck Rickenbacker is one of the few I've seen that is close to Rutherford's.

 

Claude Leonetti of french prog band Lazuli with his Leode, built by himself.


I've seen Warren Haynes play a twin neck Les Paul (or at least les paul-ish looking) guitar...can't find any pics though. I don't know how unique that is, but I've never seen one before.

 

How about Pat Metheny's Orchestrion?