{"id":2453381,"date":"2020-01-17T10:52:14","date_gmt":"2020-01-17T17:52:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=939434"},"modified":"2020-01-17T10:52:14","modified_gmt":"2020-01-17T17:52:14","slug":"black-sabbaths-tony-iommi-talks-new-signature-replica-guitar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/music-news\/black-sabbaths-tony-iommi-talks-new-signature-replica-guitar\/","title":{"rendered":"Black Sabbath\u2019s Tony Iommi Talks New Signature Replica Guitar"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Black Sabbath<\/a> entered the studio to record their monumental first album in 1969, guitarist Tony Iommi<\/a> faced a serious setback early in the session.<\/p>\n

After tracking the first song, \u201cWicked World,\u201d the pickup went out on his favorite guitar, a Fender Stratocaster he\u2019d heavily modified to accommodate the thimbles he had to wear on his fretting hand after he\u2019d lost his fingertips in a freak industrial accident<\/a>. \u201cIn them days, you couldn\u2019t go, \u2018Oh, I\u2019ll go and get another one from the guitar shop,\u2019 or get somebody to bring one over,\u201d Iommi tells Rolling Stone<\/em>. \u201cThey didn\u2019t do it like that.\u201d So he picked up his standby guitar, a red Gibson SG.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause we were in for only the day to record, I had<\/em> to use the Gibson,\u201d he says. \u201cI thought, \u2018Oh, no. It\u2019s just typical.’\u201d He laughs. \u201cBut I had worked on the Gibson a bit, so it felt normal for me to play. So I ended up doing all the rest of the songs from the first album on the Gibson. And that was it. I never looked back. I just stuck with the Gibson then.\u201d It became the instrument he\u2019d use for much of the Seventies.<\/p>\n

Now, Gibson has gone to painstaking lengths to recreate the instrument that defined Black Sabbath\u2019s sound. The company claims that the Tony Iommi \u201cMonkey\u201d 1964 SG Special Replica, which will come out later this year, is an exact copy of the iconic instrument. Gibson reverse-engineered the instrument, studying its construction and aging and mimicking details like its zero fret, \u201cstop tailpiece brushings,\u201d and of course the primate decal that gives it its name. The pickups were handmade by an apprentice of the late pickup guru John Birch, with whom Iommi had collaborated.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an exact, exact<\/em> replica of my first Gibson, the red one, which I had on the first four albums,\u201d Iommi says. \u201cI\u2019m really amazed how they\u2019d done it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Iommi says that the instrument gave him a thicker sound on the first record \u2014 it originally had stock P-90 pickups \u2014 and that as time went on, he customized it further, working with Birch. The replica reflects all of the modifications he made in the years since. \u201cThe guitar they\u2019ve done now, I can\u2019t tell the difference from the original one to the replica one,\u201d Iommi says. \u201cIt\u2019s just really great. I\u2019ve got it in my bedroom now. That\u2019s the one I\u2019ve been playing every night. I get up and play for a bit, and I really like it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The reason Iommi agreed to work with Gibson on such a unique collaboration, he says, is because of the way the company has changed for the better in recent years. He\u2019d felt that the company\u2019s previous owners weren\u2019t always so welcoming \u2014 \u201cThe old owners didn\u2019t want the people to look up when you walk into the factory, and that was quite a funny vibe,\u201d he says \u2014 so he started working with different guitar companies. The new owners, he says, have an enthusiasm for what they\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n

\"iommi<\/p>\n

Photograph courtesy of Gibson Guitars<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThey believe in the product,\u201d he says. \u201cThey want to make everything as good as they can. And I was really impressed, very impressed. I went all around the workshops and met all the people, which you\u2019d never been able to do before. \u2026 I\u2019m looking forward to working with them. And it\u2019s been great having them do the replica of the original one.\u201d<\/p>\n

The company has yet to reveal a price for the instrument, but it\u2019s bound to be expensive. Gibson is making only 50 replicas \u2014 25 left-handed models (Iommi is a southpaw) and 25 right-handed ones \u2014 and each are signed and numbered by Iommi. The guitars will also come with a replica of Iommi\u2019s cross pendant, a coffin case, a replica of Iommi\u2019s leather touring strap and a remake of the kinds of cases Gibson used in the Sixties.<\/p>\n

As for the fate of Iommi\u2019s original Strat, it\u2019s been lost to time. After he switched to the SG, he traded the instrument for a saxophone, and he says, \u201cI drove the rest of the band mad by trying to learn to play this sax.\u201d Eventually, he got rid of the woodwind. Sabbath\u2019s bassist, Geezer Butler, at one point spotted the Strat in a Birmingham, U.K., pawn shop and intended to buy it for Iommi as a surprise but it was gone by the time he got there with the money. \u201cI would have loved to have got that back,\u201d Iommi says. \u201cI never even heard of it or seen it since. But the Gibson became my guitar.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Popular on Rolling Stone <\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Black Sabbath entered the studio to record their monumental first album in 1969, guitarist Tony Iommi faced a serious setback early in the session. After tracking the first song, \u201cWicked World,\u201d the pickup went out on his favorite guitar, a Fender Stratocaster he\u2019d heavily modified to accommodate the thimbles he had to wear on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2453381","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-07 03:20:00","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2453381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2453381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2453381\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2453381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2453381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2453381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}